9:51 am, August 21, 2024
A crooked car dealer has narrowly avoided jail after he sold the same ‘death trap’ Subaru twice in two months.
Car Dealer reported last year that Steven Hickman, 62, had been convicted of selling the ‘unroadworthy’ Forester in March 2022, via his company Shelby’s of Netherton in the West Midlands.
At that time he was ordered to hand the customer a full £3,500 refund but then transpired that he sold the car again just a month later, having failed to fix the vast majority of issues.
The rogue trader was convicted last September to engaging in a misleading commercial practice and engaging in a commercial practice which contravened the requirements of professional diligence.
District Judge Graham Wilkinson said the dealer was ‘willing to sell a death trap’ and warned that a custodial sentence was likely.
However, having now returned to court, the dealer has avoided that punishment by the skin of his teeth, instead being handed a suspended sentence.
The 63-year-old retailer told the court that he did carry out some repairs on the car and had painted the underside in a black bitumen in a bid to ‘prevent further corrosion’.
After carrying out that minimal work, Hickman sold the Subaru to another unsuspecting customer for £800 more than the first.
However, just one dat later, the vehicle broke down when a severely corroded control bar failed.
Dudley Trading Standards were then called in to investigate the issue for a second time, uncovering several fresh issues.
The Forrester had been advertised as having no nasty surprises on the inside’ and ‘drives very well’ but an inspection found the car to be ‘not only unroadworthy, but also dangerous’.
An expert for the trading standards team said the vehicle had extremely severe corrosion that had reached was so extreme that the suspension was ‘highly probable’ to collapse.
He also found that several faults, highlighted by the first buyer, had not been corrected.
Hickman from Seymour Road, appeared at Wolverhampton Crown Court to be sentenced earlier this week.
He was handed a 13-month prison sentence suspended for two years and ordered to undertake 200 hours unpaid work.
The dodgy dealer must also pay £5,258 in compensation, as well as legal costs totalling £2,500.
Reacting to the sentence, James Clinton, cabinet member responsible for Trading Standards at Dudley Council, said: ‘This is a shocking case.
‘Hickman had already been brought before the courts in relation to this car and was left under no illusions that the vehicle was unroadworthy.
‘He should have scrapped it or repaired it properly, but instead he patched it up and sold it on again, this time for even more, while knowing it was, as the judge described it, a potential death trap.
‘Car traders cannot sell unroadworthy, dangerous and misdescribed cars and profit from trading in this way.
‘Dudley Trading Standards will not hesitate to investigate complaints where consumers have been misled or where they have been sold a dangerous vehicle.’
Since the incident, Hickman has changed the name of his business several times. The firm is currently based on Halesowen Rd in Netherton.
