Thread: Brand New £20k Ford Focus ST

Being driven donw motorway this morning. Came off at slip road and pulled into car park, less than 20 yards from the motorway it was travelling down.

As it pulls into the carpark the stearing goes and brakes have to be slammed on.

Reg Vardy (Reading) who sold me the car, brand new, 2 months ago, have collected after much arguing and threats of legal action. They have just phoned to say its a manufacturing fault, one of the blots on the sterering fluid pipe hadn't been tightened sufficently.

The driver wants to knw if they can make a claim for emotional distress and loss of earnings as it took 5 hours to sort out with Ford and the insurance company?

Only 2 months into a 12 month warranty (warranty with Ford, not the dealer)

You can't claim for emotional distress in the courts except in exceptional circumstances, where the product or service itself includes an emotional element (i.e. holidays, wedding photographs etc).

You can't profit from faulty goods. What you would be entitled to is a satisfactory repair, and any reasonable consequential losses that you may have suffered - you will need to be able to quantify and justify these additional losses.

I can understand that it must have been a scary experience for the driver and I do sympathise. Have you reported the fault to Trading Standards at all, or the manufacturer? TS may not be able to action much as they really need to see solid evidence that the fault was there at the point of sale (and this needs to be beyond reasonable doubt, as the TS interest will be criminal legislation). It is still well worth reporting it to them though in case this is an issue with the model.

The manufacturer also needs to know of this, as they could have found themselves liable under the tort of negligence had anything nasty happened.

Have to log out here but will look into this a bit more if I can get any more info.