If you're here for an interesting story, think I have one. It does not involve conning, odometer tampering or any of that, just a series of events that I found very entertaining to witness as a friend.
So a month ago my friend, let us call him Adam, was in the market for a Octavia vRS. It appears the vRS community is moving towards the M340i with the tuning scene picking up for Gxx BMWs, thanks to femtoevo. There were a bunch of vRS cars available, some surprisingly stock and many tuned.
Adam happened to shortlist a few cars but he was very clear that he is not going to pay inflated prices in this ridiculous used car market today. As negotiations were not closing with some sellers, he was getting impatient and a bit agitated. There is another common friend, let us call him Steve, who'd bought a vRS 230 six months' ago and was accompanying Adam and closely tracking the progress of what was happening - cars available in the market, quoted prices, the indifferent attitude of sellers and what not. Steve had his own shortcomings with the vRS and understood if there was ever a time to sell the car, it was now. One day, he suggested to Adam,
"Why don't you buy my car, I am willing to sell it?".
Steve had bought this car 6 months ago from a dealer who calls himself an
"investor" - generally happens to pay the seller money for the car, take the papers & possession and market the car for a profit.
Now to the fun part:
- The car was first owned by a doctor in Mangalore and he had tuned the car to Stage 1 at a tuner in Bangalore.
- An artist bought the car from the doctor sometime in 2021.
- Dealer bought the car from the artist around April 2022.
- Steve bought the car from the dealer in July 2022.
- Surprisingly, the tuner had posted something with the artist sometime in 2021 and they started wondering, who actually tuned the car? When we asked the artist, who we got in touch with somehow, he claimed he had taken it to the tuner to have it checked before buying it. Steve had taken the car to the same tuner in July 2022 to have it checked but tuner made no mention of its history, quite obviously as tuners don't like to certify cars or get involved in used car buy & sell processes.
- The dealer mentioned that the artist traded the vRS for a particular pick-up truck so we checked the artist's Instagram page to see when he got the pick-up, so we could understand how long the dealer had the car with him. It turns out he posted it first in April 2022, adding up the history of the car to us.
- We used one of the Vaahan apps on Android and it somehow still reflected the first owner name. Unfortunately, we could not make progress in getting in touch with the first owner and ask him more about the car.
In general, everything seemed to be ok. Also, Steve had driven the car for about 10,000 KMs before this, so everything seemed to be working fine in the car.
I am sharing this story to inform people on the forum that generally there is a lot more than what meets the eye when it comes to used cars. It is important to understand how the dealer procured the car and verify what he claims - in this case things added up but in some, they may not.