The third row of a Kluger is where we start.
Two Klugers can look identical in a listing and have lived completely different lives, and nearly all of the evidence sits behind the second row.
So we begin there, with what that row has actually been doing, and we ask before an inspector is folding seats up and down in your driveway.
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The row nobody looks at
A seven seat car is read from the back forwards
Almost nothing about how a Kluger was really used is visible from the kerb, and what is left of it is behind the second row.
A Kluger gets bought for a reason with a date attached to it. A third child, a pick up that collects other people's kids on the way home, a sport that happens on the far side of town every Saturday morning. In some of these cars the back row goes up at the start of a school term and does not come down again for years. In others the seven seats were the reason the car was chosen and then they were never needed, and the row has been folded flat under the boot floor since the week it arrived. Those two cars have not worn in a single common place.
Almost nobody buys one of these for themselves. Whoever ends up with yours is another household with the problem you had, and the first thing they will do is put a person in the back row and see how it goes. How you get in. Whether the middle seat slides properly and comes back. How much boot is left once the row is up. That is the part of the car you have had no reason to look at for years, and it is the part the next family opens first. A price worked out from a photograph and a year has no way of telling which of the two cars it is looking at, so it assumes, and the assumption about a family interior is never the generous one.
So we ask about the back of the car before anybody looks at it, and neither answer is a problem. Seven people using a car for exactly what it was bought for leaves marks, and marks get treated as marks. A row that never went up is worth saying out loud as well, because nobody assumes it, and a thing nobody has been told cannot count for anything. Every question below is one you can answer from where you are sitting, which is the reason they get asked on the phone instead of in the driveway.
Behind the second row
What we ask about the back of a Kluger
Six questions about the back two thirds of the car, because that is the part that did the work and the part you have had no reason to open in years.
- How often did the third row actually go up?
- A rough answer is plenty. Every school morning, a few times a year when the cousins come, or not once since you bought it. The two versions of this car wear in completely different places, so knowing which one is coming means the time gets spent where it is worth spending.
- Which side did everybody climb in on?
- Where the back row is in use, one door tends to do nearly all of the work and the wear collects there rather than spreading itself around. The middle seat and its release, the outer edge of the cushion, the door card, the sill underneath it. Say which side and it gets looked at properly rather than found late.
- Does it all still fold, latch and come back up?
- On a seven seater the seats are a mechanism, and a mechanism worked twice a week for years is worth trying rather than assuming. If one of them has a knack, that is worth knowing. A seat that wants a shove is not the same thing as a seat that will not latch, and only one of the two is worth anybody worrying about.
- Where does the cover over the boot live now?
- Very often not in the car at all. Once the back row is up there is nowhere for it to go, so it ends up standing against a wall in the garage, and a headrest or two usually keeps it company. None of that is lost. It is simply somewhere else, and it belongs with the car.
- Has the back half been a load space as much as a seat?
- With the row down, the back of one of these is the floor of a small van, and plenty of them have spent years being exactly that. Flat packs, bags of mulch, a mattress, the run to the tip. That lands on the backs of the seats rather than the faces of them, which is a different place to look.
- Is the next seven seater already ordered?
- It usually is, or it is about to be, and that puts your timing ahead of ours. Give us the date if you have one. It decides when the inspector comes, and it means nobody is asking a household to go without a car in the middle of a working week.
Either way
Three things that are true of both Klugers
- Both of them are cars we buy. The row that went up every morning and the row that has never moved are two different visits and one answer. Which one you have decides where an inspector spends the hour, not whether there is an offer at the end of it.
- Family wear comes off as wear. Scuffed seat backs, a door card that has been climbed past for years, a sill that has taken a lot of shoes. It is what the car was bought to do, so it is costed as ordinary use rather than written up as damage.
- The date you need it until is yours to name. Say on the first call when the replacement is due and the visit gets arranged around that. It is far easier said at the beginning than raised on the morning somebody arrives to collect the car.
Asked and answered
Three questions about selling a seven seater
The back row has been folded flat since we bought it. Does that count against the car?
No. It is one of the two ordinary lives these cars have, and it usually means the seats themselves are close to untouched while the backs of them have done all of the work. Say it on the call and the inspector spends the time on the half of the car that was actually used.
We need it until the next one turns up. Does that stop us?
No, and it is a much better thing to raise at the start than at the end. Tell us roughly when the replacement is due, or that you do not have one yet, and we work the visit around it. Needing the car until then is the normal way round here rather than the awkward one.
Mine is a hybrid rather than an electric car. Is that the sort of thing you buy?
Yes. Hybrids sit on the same list here as the electric cars, and the battery in one gets assessed properly rather than discounted on a guess. On a family car that sits beside the service history and the state of the back of it rather than in front of them.
The back row is the honest part of a Kluger. Start there.
Or call us on 03 9000 0075 and talk it through first.