1:18 pm, June 4, 2010
Typical. With the magazine safely away to the printers, all signed off, sealed and sent – I finally do the deal on the next car for our 911 for 2011 challenge.
To be honest, I had a feeling it would come off, but unfortunately it all happened a bit too late to reveal in the latest issue.
So what have I bought? Well, thanks to some canny negotiation and a major favour from dealer group Lifestyle Europe we’ve got our hands on an absolute corker.
It’s an 02/02 Ford Fiesta, 1.25-litre with just 45,000 miles on the clock! We’ve bought it blind, but from what used car controller Richard Walker says it’s a stunner.
It’s dark blue and is the freestyle model. We’ve had a hunt through the price guides and it’s on the cusp of the model change (we think like the one pictured, which isn’t the actual car), but books at around £1,400 trade.
You may remember our pot was up to £1,040 thanks to two quick sales last month. We managed to flog the Audi A3 from M25Audi for spares or repairs on eBay and not long after got £250 for the Golf, donated by Auction4Cars.com.
So how much did we manage to steal the Fiesta for? Just £900! Quite a deal, eh? And it just gets better – Lifestyle has put it through an MOT for us, given it a mini service and we’ve shelled out on 6 months tax. Total cost £985.25 with the tax.
Bargain!
A bit of hunting around on Auto Trader reveals that if we’re clever, get it looking sparkling, and find the right punter, we could get around £2,200 for it.
We found one pretty much identical to it on the classified site for that money and it had double the mileage ours has.
So things are looking up – the first car we’ve had to buy ourselves sounds like a bit of beauty. We’ll find out for sure on Monday when we pick it up.
I’m off on my holidays tomorrow for two weeks, so have left the collection and hopefully forthcoming sale to my colleague, Car Dealer commercial manager and former car salesman Duncan.
Hopefully I’ll come back from my San Francisco and find he’s done the business and doubled our pot…
Why do I get the feeling it might not be quite as simple as that?
James
