Guides
Guides: what to settle before buying a car
Long-form answers to the questions that get three sentences on a landing page — from importing through the viewing to the handover when you sell.
Legal
Sending someone: buying and collecting by proxy
Buying a car a long way off does not always mean you can go and fetch it yourself. Then someone else goes — a friend, a relative, a professional driver — and everything that person may do there is set out on one sheet of paper that you write beforehand.
7 min read
Legal
A cross-border sales contract: language, law, currency
A contract between two people in two countries contains the same points as any other — plus four questions nobody has to ask at home. Answer them in the contract, and you will not need a court whose language you do not speak to answer them later.
7 min read
Legal
Withdrawing from a car purchase: when it applies
Giving back a car with nothing wrong with it because you have changed your mind is possible in one particular situation only: a consumer buys from a business, and the contract is made without the two meeting in person. Knowing where that line runs tells you what you need in writing before you sign.
7 min read
Legal
An inherited car: keep, re-register or sell
A car in an estate is rarely the biggest matter after a death, but it is one of the first that presses: it is parked somewhere, it is insured and registered, and it is losing value. Knowing the order of steps lets you decide calmly rather than under pressure.
7 min read
Legal
Buying a car that still has finance or a lease on it
Many cars are financed or leased, and some of them come up for sale before they are paid off. That is no reason to steer clear — but it is a reason to keep to the order in which money and papers change hands.
7 min read
Legal
The customs declaration for a vehicle: who files what, and when
Most buyers picture the border as a single formality and then find themselves in two procedures, in two states, with two sets of responsibilities. This piece sorts out who is the declarant at which step, what data is required, and what has to be in your hands at the end.
9 min read
Legal
Fraud in a car purchase: the recurring patterns
Look at attempted frauds one by one and you memorise stories and fail to recognise the next one. Look at the structure and you recognise them all — there are only a few patterns, and each has a point at which it turns.
10 min read
Legal
Excluding warranty: the clause that holds
Almost every private sale contract contains a warranty exclusion, and almost every seller believes that settles it. That holds for the engine that dies two weeks later — and it does not hold for the damage you knew about and did not mention.
9 min read
Legal
A test drive with a stranger: what to settle first
The test drive is the moment a stranger drives off in your car, and legally the trickiest part of the whole sale. It is still barely risky if three things are settled first: the cover, the person and the agreement.
8 min read
Legal
Scrapping a car: the destruction certificate and deregistration
Scrapping a car is not throwing it away but handing it to a business that guarantees it is genuinely dismantled. The paperwork is why that handover is legally something quite different from letting the first caller tow it off.
8 min read
Legal
The battery warranty: what it promises and what it does not
A battery warranty sounds like security and is in fact a narrowly drawn promise. Knowing what it covers lets you value a used electric car far more accurately.
9 min read
Legal
Statutory rights and a warranty are two different things
Both terms turn up in the same sales conversation and mean different things: one claim arises by itself out of the sale, the other only where someone expressly promises it. The difference becomes visible the moment something breaks.
10 min read
Legal
The contract of sale: what belongs in it and what does not
A contract of sale is not written for a dispute but against one: it records what both sides knew and meant on the day of handover. The more precisely it does that, the less there is to assert later.
9 min read
Legal
Warranty, statutory rights, goodwill — the difference
People buying a car say “warranty” when they mean their statutory rights, and end up with goodwill. The three differ in who owes them, how long they last and who has to prove what — which is exactly what matters when something breaks.
6 min read