Last year I bought a car for £4,500 (Audi A4 estate 1.8T, 52 reg, 62k on clock). The engine failed at high speed on the motorway, which turned out to be caused by a blockage in the oil filter, which meant the engine was starved of oil and the whole engine seized up. It's a common complaint with these cars is they're not serviced regularly enough and the right oil used.

I had only had a the car 5 weeks. I have an independent engineer's report confirming this and saying I had no way of knowing this would happen.

I have a strong case against the dealer, however, they are "slippery" and I'm struggling to get their details to say who owns the company, so I can sue them through small claims process. If I do try, I expect they will simply vanish anyway.

Someone recently said my insurance may cover this because the failure of one small component cause the resultant damage.

Can anyone shed any light on this? If the insurers want to chase the dealer they can then do so.

Thanks

Rebecca

Sorry to tell you this but your insurance won't cover this, motor insurance is for typically accident damage, fire or theft, so I'd be very very surprised if they would make a payment.

Your only hope would be if the car had a warranty, but if the failure was because of a lack of service or a service item (oil) then I doubt the warranty would cover it.

Mossy

Hello there and welcome to CAG. There is a legal forum on this website in case you want to ask for further advice on that aspect.

I'm sorry Mossy didn't give you the news you would have liked, but he's rarely wrong, if ever.

HB

You don't need the owners name, you can make a claim against the business.

You may be entitled to reparation depending on how the car was described and if that description included that it will/has had a service.

Do you have legal expense insurance on any of your policies i.e. car, house, contents etc (and/or did you buy it on a credit card). if you do have legal expense insurance they might be able to instruct and pay solicitors on your behalf to undertake the recovery of your losses.

If you bought it from a company and dealer then the Sale of Goods Act should apply and if you can prove a breach of the act then you should be able to get your money back.

Also as the amount is under £5,000 you should be able to obtain a Warrant of Execution against the dealer if succesful in Court. This will allow you to get the Court to recover money or property if the Defendants have failed to pay you the amount the Judgment ordered for them to pay.

Ok first things first, need to clarify a couple of things;

You say you bought the car last year and that the defect happened after 5 weeks of ownership, so first questions; as we are now over 5 months into this year, whats been happening since? Have you been in touch with the seller about this and if so whats been the response? I'm assuming that you bought the car from a dealer/trader which will provide you with some rights under the SOGA. However, you must give the seller the oppotunity to inspect/rectify the problem FIRST before allowing anyone else to do so. If your 'independent' engineer has merely diagnosed the problem then fair enough.

Secondly; one would expect that buying a car from a dealer that it would have had the necessary checks carried out proir to you taking delivery but were you made aware that it had been serviced or not? A judge will except that after just 5 weeks of ownership unless you were made awrae that the car was due for a service, you weren't negligent in maintaining the car sufficient enough to cause this failure.

Depending on the above will depend on if it is now appropaite to take the matter to court. But as Mossy says, going through your motor insurance policy is not likely to get you anywhere. From you info so far, your complaint is with the seller.

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