Now I’m not normally one to moan, but this month I’ve had it up to my eyes and ears thanks to a Screamer by the name of Igor…

A screamer, if you’ve never encountered one (and I very much doubt you haven’t if you work in the motor trade) is a customer who buys a perfectly good car off you, bought and sold in good faith, then comes back to haunt you a few days later, complaining about the most innocuous of facts.

What’s more, the cheaper the car, the louder they scream – for some reason those who only have enough money to buy an old banger are the ones who expect a car to be perfect. People who spend good money are often very reasonable about faults, providing you do what you can to help them out.

But last month, I encountered my worst ever screamer. The bloke in question was Igor, a foreign national who had recently arrived in the UK (I only mention this as it made our communication that bit more difficult) and came to Big Mike’s to get his hands on a cheap family runabout.

The car in question was a half decent Peugeot 406 Automatic – nothing special, but the usual type of sound- as-a-pound trade-in that had been with the same previous keeper for quite a few years before they chopped it in for something a bit newer.

The price for this fine automobile, thanks to Igor’s rather brutal haggling, was a mere £795 – £200 less than I was going to punt it out for, but more than its stand-in value and I also needed the space for something more valuable, so reluctantly I let it go.

Even now, I’m not quite sure why. I had a bad feeling at the time, so it came almost as no surprise to me when, two days later, Igor phoned up and grunted that the radiator was leaking. Perhaps I’m a bit too soft, but I hate for any of my customers to think the less of me because I sell them a faulty car, even at that price, so on the basis that word-of-mouth is the best form of advertising, especially for a small independent like me, rather than tell him to proceed in a manner akin to the very start of the human reproduction cycle, I tried to make amends.

‘Rather than tell him to proceed in a manner akin to the very start of the human reproduction cycle, I tried to make amends…’

Besides, my friend Radiator Joe (the clue is in his name) is always good for a cheap rad, and for £20 I could get my hands on a guaranteed used replacement. With this in mind, I suggested that Igor bring the car back in and I’d get my boy, Jason, to put the replacement radiator in free of charge. Quite reasonable, or so I thought. But no. Igor wasn’t happy with this. He didn’t want to make the 30-mile journey to my forecourt, and instead asked if I could send the radiator to him and he’d get his brothers to help fit it. So, with goodwill still my main intention, I sent Jason off in my trusty but rusty Discovery to drop off the radiator at the chap’s home.

A couple of hours later, Jason returned looking a little harassed. He’s a nice lad, but a bit too scrawny to handle himself well in a fight, so when he’d turned up at the bloke’s house to find Igor’s ‘brothers’ all inspecting the radiator and grunting at each other in an alien tongue, he was worried he’d never get out alive.

Luckily, he did, and as far as I was concerned that was it. But Igor had other ideas. After they’d fitted the new radiator, he drove the car for a week or so only to find it had dropped all its coolant, overheated and this time warped the head gasket. The car was pretty much a goner.

Its failure, I have no doubt, was due to the ‘brothers’ fitting the new radiator incorrectly – perhaps not tightening a hose clip properly or something as trivial as that. But I’ll never know. What I do know, though, is that I’m over £800 out of pocket. On my lunch hour the other day I popped over to the post office to put some paper foldies in my business account and returned to find Jason pinned up against my Portakabin by two Mafioso-looking thugs, one of whom was repeatedly bopping him over the head with a Peugeot 406 radiator hose.

I’m no wimp – Big Mike, after all, is no name for a sissy – but on this occasion I decided to take my punishment on the chin for selling a car to someone when it just didn’t feel right in the first place. And if anyone’s looking for a previously very tidy X-Plate Peugeot 406 for spares or repairs, do let me know.

Who is Big Mike?

Well, that would be telling. What we do know is he’s had more than 30 years experience in the car trade and picked up some seriously funny  tales along the way. You can read more Big Mike here