9:37 am, May 29, 2015
IF I WERE a car, I would be MoT exempt. That’s because any vehicle built before 1960 no longer has to undergo the annual roadworthiness test, which is hardly surprising to be honest, as anything from that era is crap anyway.
I can hear a few scoffs emerging from beneath beards as I say that, but honestly, truly, would you rather be in a crash in a modern car, or something built in 1959 with no crumple zones, no airbags and drum brakes, which may have got you into all that trouble in the first place? If it’s the latter, you’re clearly nuts.
What this recent piece of legislation does do, though, is drive home to me one thing, and that’s how important the MoT really is.
What? Big Mike, being all high and mighty about a piece of government legislation that adds red tape to the whole car ownership experience? Well no, not quite.
Where I’m going with this is the lack of importance that a huge number of car sellers seem to place on the MoT being short or not even present when they sell a car. Given how much tighter the test is now compared to how it used to be, it doesn’t half set alarm bells ringing with me.
You see, back in the day, I, too, had a happy-go-lucky approach to MoT tests. When I was a young man, starting out in the vehicle reassignment industry through a modern apprenticeship, getting an MoT was a fairly simple process that normally involved a thorough inspection of the sills and subframe mounts of any trade vehicle. If both were present and didn’t collapse if tapped with a toffee hammer, we simply booked an MoT at the local service station, and assuming the lights and brakes attempted to work, the tester would issue a slip of paper declaring the car roadworthy for another 12 months.
These days, swapping an MOT test for a pint simply isn’t possible
If, on application of the toffee hammer, the sills collapsed or the mounts threatened to demount, a combination of filler, plasticine and half-arsed welding that resembled a bucket of pigeon poo ensued, before the trip to the MoT station.
If the tester still wasn’t satisfied, then either me or my fellow apprentice, Stan, was dispatched with a handful of shillings to the Rat and Cleaver, where we were given free rein to have a pint using the company’s money.
The only proviso was that, while we were down there, we’d seek out Big Joe or his mate Reuben, and exchange a crisp pound note for a newly-franked but blank MoT certificate, upon which the relevant car details could be inserted when back at the ranch. Yes, it was all a bit, well, rogue, really. But back in those days the used-car industry was very much like that, and much as I’ve done the odd, ahem, ‘deal’ over the years, I think it’s all the better for cleaning up its act.
These days, swapping an MoT test for a pint simply isn’t possible, meaning the vast majority of tickets are entirely legitimate. That, in turn, adds a massive amount of value to a car – I make a point of putting a fresh ticket on anything with less than half a year’s ticket left to run, and I certainly don’t buy them down the pub.
It astonishes me, therefore, to see so many cars advertised online, especially on that well-known auction website, that are offered for sale with no ticket at all, excuses ranging from ‘I haven’t had time’ to ‘MoT expired, and I haven’t got round to getting it done again’. These vendors clearly believe that such a thing isn’t a major problem – but of course, it is.
Not only does a lack of MoT render a car illegal to be driven on the public road (unless it’s being taken directly to an MoT test station, without passing ‘Go’ or collecting £200), but it makes it impossible to tax, which in turn makes it even more illegal, if that’s at all possible, for any punter to drive it home. Under the new laws, you can’t buy a car without renewing the road tax first, regardless of whether or not there are a few months remaining.
More annoyingly, though, the vast numbers of these cars offered for sale make forecourt stock with fresh MoTs look expensive.
There’s nothing more annoying than a smartphone-wielding punter wandering up and showing you what they believe is essentially the same car, but the better part of a grand cheaper, when you know full well that a new catalytic converter and a brake overhaul, for example, would cost at least the difference to put right.
That little slip of paper is worth a lot of money, more so than ever before. Don’t buy a car without one – as these days, not even the trade does that. Unless, of course, it’s a ‘classic’, like me…
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