After A Dozen Years+ Buying a Car

Maytrees min whose car we have used for years, is about to leave home for her new flat. This resulted in our deciding to buy a decent 2nd hand car, inter alia, to facilitate our visiting maytrees ma. and minding grandchildren.

Initially the arrangement of buying a second hand car seemed relatively easily as a member of the BU who lives nearby was selling his Honda Jazz car. This is ideally sized for the two of us. Unfortunately his car proved not to be apt  primarily because it turned out to be an automatic whereas we have always driven cars with manual gear changes.

Interestingly there were criticisms too from my own brothers and sisters such as suggesting  that we went  for a larger car or a British one. 

The few remaining British owned manufacturers tend to produce cars that are out of our price range. The German manufacturers are being pursued by the EU for billions of Euros  for allegedly cheating on their CO2 or is it N02 emissions. The USA has already secured $billions in compensation for similar claims and perhaps after Brexit the UK government can make its own claim. Meanwhile I would not touch German makes with a barge pole from the point of view of buying one. Minis  for example may seem British but the manufacturer is owned by BMW which is threatening anyway to manufacture them abroad as it disapproves of Brexit.

The old car of maytrees min. which we have been driving, is a VW Polo Diesel.

The EU having encouraged people to buy diesel cars clearly made an huge mistake as the cost of owning such or driving  diesel car into London will from April 2019 be very high, essentially on public  health grounds. However no compensation is being offered to those who accepted the  previous advice on the subject. Additionally the Polo is extraordinarily difficult  (for us at least) to park well.

In any event  a local Honda garage had a  Jazz car which seemed just right and at  decent price so after a little haggling on the price and some extras a deal was done. 

Buying the car was the least difficult part of the work. Next was securing a parking permit from the London Borough of Merton which led to me putting in a complaint about their poor computer system despite the high council taxes the Council charges. 

Insurance though was surprisingly easy and not too dear, given that we have not owned and insured a car for many years - well done Direct Line.

Paying for the car was by bank transfer, which seemed straightforward enough though soon afterwards there was an urgent message from the Bank to give them a call as they suspected fraud - that was impressive though thankfully no fraud.

The EU and Japan having reached a no tariff  trade deal, Hondas will be made in Japan from 2020 onwards but the model we purchased was British made.