Cadillac Catastrophe

In late 2015 my wife and I decided to buy a 1990 Cadillac Seville which had 12 months MOT on it from Yorkshire Trade Care Centre in Snaith East Yorkshire, my wife has always liked the looks of American cars and as she cannot drive because of her many disabilities we took the plunge, we managed to afford it by selling some items we had. “The car is fine, it is a 20 yarder though, by that I mean the paint is quite old up close” said the salesman, well that’s not a problem I thought, as long as it’s nothing serious and the car is sound, “yes it’s mechanically fine” says the salesman.

It was delivered, we were quite excited to see it arrive. I decided to check the oil and to see if it was as it was described on their Ebay page. Open the bonnet, take the dipstick out…well not exactly, the top came off and left the ‘stick’ in the pipe. Oh well we thought, it’s teething troubles we’ll get another one and have our local garage fish out the remaining part of the dipstick.

Getting in for the first drive was fun, never driven a left handed car so it took some getting used to, as did having the headliner swinging in front of my face and close to blocking my view, something we can fix ourselves I suppose. So I go to open the drivers side window, I know it opens because it’s half way down on Yorkshire Trade Car Centre’s picture. Nope, doesn’t work, I  know lets take the Caddy back to our local garage, it’s probably just the motor gone and needs replacing. Nope, the whole mechanism had been stripped out of the door and the window wedged into the closed position, now I find that a little dangerous, the doors lock automatically in the event of a fire and the doors remaining locked then being able to drop the window to get out would be the preferred option. Oh yes, the mechanism was in the boot, which - when we got it had about a gallon of water in it (the car was shown in their car showroom so they must have a huge leak in their roof for this to happen). Naturally the mechanism was rusted and needed work to be able to be reinstalled.

What next? Oh yes, the wheels were badly corroded and the tyres were perished, lets buy a new set of alloys and tyres.

Hello Mr garage owner, what’s that you say, the ball joint looks defective? It’s amazing what you find when changing a set of wheels.

I could keep put up with the many faults as long as the car was mechanically sound…though there is the problem that the petrol gauge never worked properly and we had to carry a can out petrol around in the boot just in case we ran out unexpectedly. Petrol! Now here’s a nice story, We decided to drive to the shops to do a bit of shopping, petrol read as 2 gallons left so lets put some in shall we? Pulled up at the petrol station and stood there with the petrol pump in my hand when my wife screams, “there’s smoke coming out of the engine!”  Sure enough the font of the engine has masses of smoke coming out of it, do I put the petrol pump down and run to the wife’s aid so I can get her out and our two dogs who were in the back? Do I get the wheelchair rigged up or simply drag my wife out of the car? Luckily it was just the radiator falling to bits and the ‘smoke’ was actually steam from the hot water. It didn’t make a difference to my wife who is epileptic as the huge upset and distress did cause a fit to happen later in the day.

By luck we happened to be looking through Ebay and saw an American car we actually wanted in the first place, a 1985 Chevrolet Camaro - which hasn’t had one single problem in the 6 months we have had it -  so we decided to sell out main car to finance the Camaro and thought we would ask Yorkshire Trade Car Centre if they would buy the Cadillac back when we had put it through an MOT. This is something that we have done with other cars and other garages and even though you lose out financially you don’t have the hassle of having people turning up at your door when it’s inconvenient, your wife having epileptic seizure, unable to be left alone as her disabilities mean that I have to make sure she is okay. Yorkshire Trade Car Centre said “no, we aren’t buying cars at the moment”, “okay” says me .

So something didn’t seem kosher to me so I decided to watch their website, sure enough a constant supply of cars were coming in, considering they weren’t buying any this seemed strange. I decided to text them to ask if they would part exchange the Cadillac for an English car, the cars I asked about had been sold that very day they said.

A friend of mine suggested I check the MOT history of the car on a government website, I didn’t know you could do this but I gave it a go. The car had failed two MOT’s in the same year we brought it, masses of faults, many advisories, our MOT had a pass with no advisories, in fact from one failure to the pass it took a little over half an hour, this is to order parts from America, get them sent to the UK, fit them and go through an MOT. An MOT takes upwards of 45 minutes.

I’ve been sold a death trap of a car, Yorkshire Trade Car Centre have the legal team of LawGistics representing them and I am putting all this online so as to show part of what has happened in the 12 months it had an MOT and the 4 or 5 months it’s been stranded at the garage we use because the repairs it needed before it got it’s fraudulent MOT from Yorkshire Trade Car Centre (and I dare you to sue me over that statement) are still there, they were NOT carried out. I invite Joel Combes, Sales and Marketing Director of LawGistics to read this as he claims he wants to help, but one thing I don’t do and that is to hide matters, I prefer them out in the open, my wife and I are honest people, painfully honest and it always causes more problems than if we were to be dishonest, so Mr Combes car to reassess your clients actions? Oh and a further check on the car reveals it was probably owned previously by a Gypsy from the largest Gypsy camps in the UK, so it was probably driven into the ground and had no maintenance carried out on it, which would also explain the state of the engine, did I mention the two cracked exhaust manifolds which will cost almost the same price as we brought the car for to have it repaired?

It’s time dodgy car dealers were brought under control. As the car has a provable fake MOT I am asking for Yorkshire Trade Car Centre to take the car back and repair it to the condition it should have been when it was first purchased off them, its not too much to ask, or they could buy it back at 75% of what we paid for it, I’m easy either way.

Oh and for the person at Yorkshire Trade Car Centre who thinks my campaigning for disabled people and carers is being an internet troll?

https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-5d15-Enough-is-enough-the-attacks-on-disabled-people-cannot-go-on

https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-ea68-Fighting-for-Dylan#.WIsywGcaeUk

https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-cda3-Abra-cadaver-How-to-conjure-fatal-poverty#.WIsy1mcaeUk

https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-9ac3-Camerons-hypocrisy-goes-off-the-scale#.WIsy5GcaeUk

https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-a440-Disabled-people-face-a-more-terrifying-time-than-ever#.WIsy_mcaeUk

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tory-mp-philip-davies-slammed-6737444

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QugDr-APK1Y

Shame on you Yorkshire Trade Car Centre, hang your head in shame, oh and I challenge you to provide proof of these "abusive emails" I have supposedly sent you.