8% of 40,000 imported cars are ‘write-offs’

At least 8% of the more than 40,000 cars imported from Britain to Ireland last year had previously been declared as write-offs, it has been claimed.

Because imported cars are only subjected to a visual inspection when they arrive in the country, major safety issues may not be picked up, according to Jeff Aherne of Cartell.ie.

Mr Aherne said some “unscrupulous people” are importing the vehicles, re-registering them, and then selling them on.

The re-registration masks important details of the vehicle’s history, including the number of owners, and its accident history, prior to arriving in this country.

In one case which Cartell.ie came across, a large people carrier was being sold on an Irish website for over €8,000, yet a check revealed it was actually found to have been declared as a class-C write-off in Britain. That means that the damage to the car was greater than 50% of the pre-accident value.

Mr Aherne said thanks to the vehicle information his company can access from its partners in Britain, it could see that the car was written off in mid-2011.

At category C, it would have been a very bad write-off.

He said: “You can probably guarantee that airbags were deployed. Instead of it being left in the UK, within months it was here in Ireland.

“It would either have been brought over and it was repaired here, but they should have declared it to Revenue and NCT, or it was repaired over there badly, brought over here, and sold.”

He said the car had had three owners since it came into the country in 2012.

“That is a massive indication that there is something wrong. It has had three owners already. Someone has obviously bought the car, realised there is something wrong, and then tried to sell it,” said Mr Aherne.

A few years ago when there was a favourable exchange rate between sterling and euro, up to 90,000 cars were being imported from Britain every year and 10% of those were write-offs, Mr Aherne said.

Mr Aherne said of the more than 40,000 cars imported from Britain last year, at least 8% had previously been written-off.

Motorists have been advised to get as much detail as they can before making a purchase — with a myriad of information now available including whether the car was a taxi or hackney, its history in Ireland, its history if it was brought in from Britain, and also its Irish finance status.

Cartell.ie estimates that 11% of vehicles offered for sale in this country have money owing on them by the person trying to offload them.

In such instances, the finance company is still technically the owner of the vehicle and can reclaim it, even if the new owner has paid the previous owner for it.