Thread: Engine blows up after 5 months

I am helping someone try and get the above problem resolved and at the moment, without much luck. This is what happened:

Took delivery with an invoice dated the beginning of Jan '09. The car is a 2003 Ford Focus with 33k miles. 3,900 was paid for it. Six weeks later the car kept cutting out and was returned. The dealer said it was a faulty coil and replaced it. He wanted full payment for it and after a bit of arguing said he would only give the keys back if 50 pounds was paid. The person I am helping is a young lady and it seems that she was bullied into handing over the 50 quid. A week later, the car started to very strongly pull over to one side. It was taken to a local garage, not the dealer, and they said it was the result of serious uneven wear on the 2 front tyres. They replaced them at a cost of 87 pounds. Then at the end of April she noticed oil was leaking out of the car on the drive and she took it into the local garage. They said that there was excessive crankshaft pressure building up and pushing the oil out. Their view was that the engine was shot. She took the car back to the dealer and they said the car had been run on low oil which had damaged the engine. They said they would put a replacement engine in which would cost 1,200 pounds but they would contribute 50% towards it because she had had the car for such a short time. They said the cost to her would be approximately 600 pounds.

There is no way she let the oil run low. The car was pumping it out all over her drive. She collected the car from the dealer and has not used it since. She later had the car towed to a Ford main dealer to look at it. They did a compression test. One of the cylinders had very low pressure and they suspected worn piston rings.

We have written to the dealer a number of times and he is refusing to accept that he needs to replace the engine at his cost. My lay interpretation of the SOGA is that he has to fix the problem as it is deemed that if the fault occurs during the first six months, the fault was there when he sold it.

Another twist to this is that the invoice has a company name but not a company number. It is a name without "Ltd". The company name used in other variations with the same trading address is for companies that have been wound up or in the process. When the dealer replies to her it is on one of the wound up company letterheads but the company number was not on the original invoice. I don't know whether this means the contract is with the guy who would seem to own the company as he was trading as a sole trader.

I would welcome any thoughts as to what options we may have for taking this further. I guess the county court is next.

Thanks in advance.

Any views guys? I would welcome any feedback

- thanks