In Geelong those kilometres were made on one road, not in stop start traffic.
A car that runs the same road every day puts its distance on in long steady stretches, and the odometer has no way of saying so.
So we ask what the trip is, and the offer comes off the battery reading taken at your place.
- The inspector comes to you
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Kilometres
The first number anybody reaches for is the one that tells you least
Two cars can carry the same distance and have lived nothing like the same life. On an electric car it is the reading that separates them.
A car that goes up the highway to Melbourne and back has its whole history in one shape. The same on ramp, the same lane, the same exit, warm long before it arrives and holding a steady speed for most of the way. The same total made around a suburb is a different animal altogether: a cold start, a short trip, another cold start, and the brakes and the steering doing something at every corner of it. Both of them show a number on the dash. The number does not say which one it was.
That is why the odometer is the wrong place to start. It is the one figure that travels with a car, so a buyer working off a screen prices from it, and a big one is turned into a big deduction before anybody has looked at anything. State of health is the reading that says how much of the original capacity is still there, and on an electric car it moves the value more than kilometres do. Where a car that has done its distance in long even runs actually sits is a thing to go and find out rather than assume, and nobody has ever found it out from the odometer. The other half of a car like this is the paper it has generated along the way, because a car that does this run tends to get kept, and there is a page of its own about what years of one ownership leave behind.
What the run does leave behind is ordinary and all of it is readable. Tyres go on more often. The driver's seat and the driver's door have had the same person twice a day for years. The service book fills up well ahead of the calendar. None of that is hidden and none of it is priced in advance, because the inspector is standing in front of the car looking at it. And the part nobody else asks you for is the part you have. You know what the trip is, when it changed and what the car has been doing since, which is more than anyone working from a plate and an odometer will ever have.
The run
What we ask about a car that does one road
Five questions about how the distance was made rather than how much of it there is.
- Is most of that number one trip, and what is the trip?
- The run up the highway and back, a drive to a site that moves around, or a pattern that has changed a few times over the years. It is the quickest way to know what the distance actually is. A car that made it in long even stretches is not the same proposition as one that made the same total in traffic, and the odometer on its own cannot tell anybody which happened.
- Does it leave home full, or does it get topped up along the way?
- Plugged in overnight and away in the morning, charged somewhere near the other end while you work, or a stop on the way home when the day has run long. Neither habit is a mark against the car and neither one is subtracted from the offer. What it tells us is how the car has really been run, which is worth knowing before anybody arrives to look at it.
- Has the run changed lately?
- Jobs move, days at home change, and the car that did the trip every weekday becomes the one that does the short stuff. It matters because the most recent stretch of a car's life is the part an inspector is looking at, and because a service book reads very differently once somebody knows when the pattern changed and why.
- When did the tyres last go on, and what went on?
- A car covering this sort of distance gets through them, and what was fitted is worth a sentence: a matched set, two different brands, or whatever the place had that week. It is not a deduction anybody decides in advance. It goes into the number the way everything else on the car does, and it saves the inspector working out what they are looking at.
- Has it been serviced on distance rather than on dates?
- A car doing a lot in a year reaches the next service long before the date comes round, so the useful question is whether it went in when the distance said so and kept going in on that basis. If it did, have the book or the invoices somewhere findable on the day. If it slipped at some point, say so on the call. That is easy to explain early and awkward to discover late.
The appointment
Three things that are true before anybody reads the odometer
- A big number is not a decision we have already made. The kilometres change what the offer is, not whether there is one, and what it gets built on is the state of health reading taken at your place while you watch.
- The visit happens wherever the car actually is. The inspector comes to your home or your work, so if the car spends its working hours at the far end of the run rather than in your driveway, say which and the day gets arranged around that.
- Money owing on it does not have to be sorted out first. Say so on the first call and the payout goes straight to your financier, a novated lease included, and if the car comes in under what is owed on it then that shortfall is put in writing and read by you before anything is signed.
We work out of 374 Settlement Rd, Thomastown VIC 3074. The inspector comes to you, which is the part that matters from here.
Worth asking first
Three the odometer usually raises
The odometer is well up there. Is it worth me calling at all?
Yes, and it is worth doing before you accept a number from somebody who priced the car off that figure and nothing else. What we build the offer on is the state of health reading the inspector takes at your place. The distance still counts. It just does not count for anything like as much as you have been led to expect.
Nearly all of it is highway. Does that work in my favour?
It is not a bonus that gets added on. It is context, and context is what stops the number being read the worst possible way. It also points the inspector at the parts of the car that actually do the work on a run like that, which is a better use of the visit than staring at the odometer.
I still need it for the trip until it is sold. Does that get in the way?
No. The car stays with you and stays on the road until everything is signed, so keep doing the run exactly as you have been. It also means the reading gets taken on the car the way you actually use it, which is the version of it we would rather see anyway.
Tell us what the trip is, and let the reading do the rest.
Or call us on 03 9000 0075 and talk it through first.