Calvin's Car Diary | UK’s Biggest Independent Car Dealer on Scams, Thefts & Supercars

0:00This is a lifestyle. So do you reckon you're the biggest independent car dealer in the UK? We're just, we're buying and selling cars that we love. I still get that buzz. Leave them to sell! What's the easiest car to steal? In my experience, it's definitely a f***. Nicking with a screwdriver. Give us a few things you can spot from people who screw you over with cars. I'm going to take it for test drive. Do you want to come with me? Oh no, no, it's alright, you go on your own. That there is a red flag. We had a car stolen. I reported it to the police. They didn't do anything. It was then on us to find it.

0:27We found out the guys' names, dresses. The next day, we get a phone call here to say... Do you think insurance is a bit of a scam? The amount of money that I've paid out in insurance over the years compared to the amount that I've claimed back, it's just got out of control. Rate these four supercar brands in order. McLaren, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche. I'm just going to say...

0:51What's the biggest scam in the car market right now? What is the biggest scam? I suppose there's lots of scams, isn't there? There's not one big scam. There's lots of different ways you can, customers can hustle dealers. How? How do customers hustle dealers? Selling cars that are broken, selling cars with issues, selling cars that are stolen, outstanding finance. Right. Stuff like that. And is that easy for the average car buyer to fall for? Yeah, I think every car buyer that's been doing it long enough has experienced a lot of them scenarios, yeah. Yeah. Have you ever been scammed like buying a car?

1:27scammed in the sense that I've been sold dodgy cars and not like broken cars and not picked up that they're broken when I buy them it happens a lot even like people come down all the time part exchanging cars you see it a lot on my channel where people we buy a lot of part exchanges of other dealers for example we've got one at the minute we've bought it off a dealer and he took it in part exchange he just rang us up and said do you want to come and pick it up we've bought it straight off him it doesn't meet his stock profile we've took it back it's broke down straight away we've rang him up this is this is two sides to this story we rang him up he's like well tough it's a trade car but that's a different matter together the point is his customer's gone to him traded that car in knowing full well that it's got a major problem and not told him about it so he's paid correct money for it and he's then given it to us a little bit of a margin maybe and now we're lumbered with this car but it's the core of the problem was the immoral person that went to him initially to sell that car.

2:27It happens a lot. Isn't it the dealer's responsibility to do the due diligence? Yeah, yeah. And how do you know if a customer is chancing it and being immoral or they just don't know? I mean, I'm not a car expert. If I sold a car to you, I don't know if there's anything wrong with it. Yes and no. Well, that's what I want to know. Yeah. So if you come to me with your Aston Martin, yeah, you've driven, I don't know how long you've owned that car for, but two years, two years. You know exactly how that car drives. Yeah. Yeah. You've known how it drives. I don't know how old it, how old is the car?

2:58Probably nearly five years now. Okay. It's a new, newish car. Yeah. So you know how well that car drives, whether you know about cars or not. If you came to me today and tomorrow after I bought that car for you, it's got a gearbox problem and I rang you, you'd, you'd know, you would have known prior to bringing that car down, whether that's got a gearbox problem or not. So if you ring me, are you trying to fish if I knew this or not? Yeah, potentially, but it's kind of irrelevant because just like you said, it's the trader's problem. Right, because it's done. Because you can get away, you can sell me your Aston Martin with a Duff gearbox and you can get away with it.

3:34So it's down to us as buyers to make sure, because a gearbox on that car, it ain't cheap. It's a lot of money. So it's down to us as buyers to make sure that that car's all right. So we see it all the time. We see it all the time. You hear of people saying it as well. oh, you hear people say, I've got this car, it's got an issue, I'm just going to go and pie exchange it somewhere. And that's, you know, what people do. It's bad. I want to come to some of the red flags and how to spot them, because how many bonnets do you reckon you've looked under in your life? Thousands. I don't know how many thousands, but yeah, lots.

4:06So if we picked up a bonnet on this car, you should be able to spot stuff pretty quick. Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to ask you to do it. Yeah, yeah, no, 100%. But if we did, because I wouldn't know what I'm looking at. Yeah. Maybe just work out how many cylinders it's got. But surely you could look at something pretty quick and go, there's something wrong with that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Okay. But surely even you've missed something once. Oh, 100%. So what's the biggest thing you missed? What are you like, how did I not see that that cost you loads of money? A guy sold us a car.

4:35This was years ago. And it turned out to be a stolen car. It was a Nissan Micro or something, just an old banger. We were starting out, didn't have loads of money. he's come to one of our shops we had a car buying shop similar to we buying a car people come to us to sell their cars and turn out it wasn't necessarily it is stolen someone owed him money he's nicked their car off them and what is to us to sell like like as if we were cash converters and we've bought it yeah it's not marked as stolen he's got the paperwork he's got logbook and everything then the police have turned up to say you've bought a stolen car and we had sold the car by that point it became a civil matter between the two people and it wasn't marked as a stolen car but i got dragged down the police station i got a grilling from the police it you know that there's not really much to learn from that that scenario so you wouldn't if that could happen again you're saying yeah it could happen because there's no other way to know if it's been nicked or not no no well there is you we use car vertical so we do car vertical checks on every single car that we buy but if someone stole that car to if you've your car's gone missing today and haven't reported it yet well car vertical ain't gonna know about your car being stolen yeah point so you've got a even judging people like well i was going to ask about that's the next thing so i say this all the time my channel when you're buying a car yeah you can you can look at the car and it's why i kind of don't like buying from auctions not so we do buy from auctions and it's good it's a good way to buy it's convenient it's quick you can buy lots in a short space of time but people meeting people is just as important as looking over the car looking under the bonnet of the car driving the car because you can you know naturally we judge people don't we that's what we do so when i meet someone rob with his aston martin i'm sussing him out too right i have to yeah the car's a lot of money it's a big investment whether it's an aston martin or the nissan micro back in back in the day it's still a lot of my money and i am rightly so i'm on my back foot and you've got to be yeah so um give us a few things you can spot from people who screw you over with cars i mean is there like a trait a general trait yeah if i say to a customer rob let's is there anything wrong with this car no i always ask is there anything wrong with the car yeah just verbally is there anything wrong with it they will nearly always say no yeah if i catch them out lying let's not get to that bit yet go for a test drive i'll say rob i'm going to take it for test drive do you want to come with me oh no no it's all right you go on your own well why don't you not want i'm driving your Aston Martin do you not want to come with me nah nah nah you go go on take the keys you just help yourself that there is a red flag right usually when someone says take the drive there's something they're not going to be comfortable about on that test drive in that cabin and they don't want to be in there they don't want to be in there wait a minute hold on Rob the gearbox is knocking the clutch is slipping whatever right then at that point you've now got a liar because I've asked oh because you're intentionally going to ask it before yeah so Rob has now lied to me He's told me there's nothing wrong with his car.

7:34I've just discovered it in his new gearbox. So what else is wrong with a car? And again, we see this a lot on the channel where people lie and then they lie again. And when you even watch the footage about it, there's lies that you don't even notice, but you spot after. So yeah, you learn along the way. I think, you know, we all learn about people on our journey, don't we? Yeah. And you get better at it. Yeah. Sure. So what percentage of cars will you walk away from? If I'm buying your car and I discover it's got a gearbox problem and you've lied to me, I'm now in a position where I can just say, I don't want to buy your car or see it as an opportunity.

8:16I'm up for buying your car. You want X for it,£80 ,000, for example. A gearbox for this car is going to be£10 ,000. I'll give you£65 ,000 for it. Right. And you're going to say, well, no, I'm not going to take that. But I'll buy it if the money's right. and I'll go and put a gearbox in it. But it needs a new gearbox today. Either you've got to do it and pay for it, or I'll do it and I'm up for doing it. But the price has got to reflect that. So basically for you then, it sounds like any car's good at the right money. Yeah. But what about like an engine or something like that? Like, have you ever had a car where the engine was...

8:54Well, that example I just gave you about the car that we bought from Trader, that car is looking like it needs a new engine. We have it a lot. Yeah, cars need engines. but again like i'll buy a non-runner and i'll either sell it as a non-runner or if i see not even if i see better value in trying to repair it sometimes fixing these cars is just long the cars sat around for a long time so sometimes just selling it as it is a bit like you buying a run down property sometimes you might think you know i can earn a quick 50 grand out of it just selling as it is from auction i can sell it on the open market i might get um mr and mrs smith come by as their home so sometimes we'll buy you problematic cars the customer will be honest with us i've got an asthmatic needs a new gearbox would you buy it i'll take 60 grand for it and we'll be like yeah and we'll buy it and we might send it to auction yeah and it might we might make a little margin out of it so yeah i think part of our success if you like is being resourceful yeah you know you've got to be yeah okay i definitely want to talk about how someone can spot red flags buying a car you must know more but i want to do that in a bit um because i want to get your story like how long have you been doing this how many cars in total in your life have you sold because i mean how many cars are here first of all there's we've got about 170 cars in stock at the minute wow and how many cars do you sell a year we sell uh about over 100 cars a month so well over a thousand cars a year wow and you've been doing this what 10 years we started in started the business in 2011 but we haven't done a thousand cars a year since 2011 though we've grown yeah you know back then we might have been doing 10 cars a month but yeah right but you've sold thousands of cars yeah yeah and how did you get into this started at school basically just love cars like yourself just enjoyed cars love doing a deal i think i think the first thing that triggered me to get into cars was we'd done a deal me and my brother bought an old astro gt i've told that story a lot of times on the channel um and we might have earned say 300 pound out of it right how much was the car to buy it was i can't remember the numbers 300 quid for the car we might have earned three four hundred pound profit out the car so we sold it for so you doubled your money doubled our money but my mates were going to school at that time it's not school my mates were going to work or I was going to work at that time for 150 quid a week we've just earned double that out of one car so the money was clearly easier to earn out buying and selling cars we didn't just get straight into it we tried different things um we always done the odd car on the side I'd done I was in the building trades my brother's an estate agent so we've done a bit of property um we just always found ourselves come back to cars because it's just what we knew what we loved and the journey actually started with we set up a hand car wash was on the side of the road washing cars right and we set up this little car wash it wasn't great i mean it was great because i was with my brother all day every day washing cars and we had a little bit of money but off the side of the car wash we were buying cars of customers they would turn up getting their car cleaned and then photographing them in the car park we're like oh what are you doing that car do you want to sell it yeah yeah i was going to advertise it on auto trader all right we'll do it we'll buy it off you now and we'd buy it and we'd give it a good value get it mot and sell it on the side of the car wash eventually yeah the cars then became more profitable than the car wash so we faded car washes out and then um started doing cars so do you reckon you're the biggest independent car dealer in the uk maybe yeah maybe do you have any goals to be the biggest we're still very much enjoying it like we're very much you can still enjoy it when you're big no i know but i think that what no on the subjects of goals like our goal is just to enjoy enjoy the journey enjoy like you've seen today i've got my brothers here i've got my niece here my little boy comes up here like this is this is a lifestyle for us we're just we're buying and selling cars that we love um customers love it we're in a place that we're you know really happy to be here and in my head i'm still driving cars and i'm sure you're the same yeah i still drive down the road like wow i'm driving a bloody m5 today i'm driving an r8 or whatever i still i still get that buzz so yeah the buzz for me comes from yeah doing deals running the day-to-day business um but also enjoying the cars yeah what's the easiest car to steal what's the easiest car to steal an old voxel astro gte they're very easy to steal an old yeah them days cars were just so easy to nick you could nick them with a screwdriver and what about the more modern cars well the more modern cars people a lot of cars that we've got here what goes to mobilise them because they're I mean they're a bit of a pain but they they're good they they're an extra layer of protection yeah um but you know you're seeing people going up to people's driveways scanning the key from their front door getting into the car driving it away with ease they don't even need a screwdriver do they they're literally opening the car and then jumping it and driving it off so So yeah, I suppose modern technology has almost been our enemy to an extent.

14:14Wasn't there one time when Range Rovers were getting nicked all the time? There was. And we'd done a video about it because I got a recall on our 2018 Range Rover. And they called us in to do a security recall. And yeah, they soon got on top of it. Obviously, insurances were impacted by it, which affected the market drastically. We sell a lot of Range Rovers. We were seeing them drop. we stopped buying them for a period of time so ranger was dropped because the insurance was so high insurance went up because they were having these security issues yeah but it wasn't just ranger over that were having these security issues like people's cars are getting nicked off their drives all the time because of these keyless yeah this keyless entry thing but yeah they they've got on top of it and i know now that even by buying this new ranger over that we're about to pick up the insurance is reasonable on it so is it how much about three grand for the year Okay, because some people are having to pay 30 grand plus for insurances on a Range Rover.

15:07Yeah, not now. Oh, you think they've got a hold of it? I feel like they've got. Maybe not. Maybe I'm wrong. But in my experience, that's not currently happening. Yeah, because that's mad. Do you think insurance is a bit of a scam? Yes and no. I suppose it is because it's compulsory. And I think that's... I suppose I say that, but if someone crashed into me and they've got no insurance, then I would expect that they should be enforced to have insurance. You're buying peace of mind, didn't you? But are you though, when all these insurance companies like wriggle like shit to get out of it? If someone crashes into my M5 and they haven't got insurance, I'm grateful that they've been, or sorry, and they do have insurance, they're skint, they can't afford anything, but they've made sure that they've insured their car.

15:52I'm grateful that that was enforced because they've just crashed into my M5. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, the amount of money that I've paid out in insurance over the years, compared to the amount that I've claimed back, the ratio is literally like, you know. So you've made them a lot of money, you mean? Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, I can't decide what I think about this. Because, you know, you're saying about it being compulsory, and I think in some ways it should be. Well, it should be, because life can be at stake. But my Aston Martin DBS was parked outside my office in its usual space. A lady in a Yaris reversed into it.

16:28um she didn't drive off which some people do because i've had a few people bump into my car and they just fucking drive off yeah um so her repair might have been i don't know 50 100 quid hardly a little mark but you know replacing the the back part of my car is thousands of pounds yeah so i went to phone the insurance company just like thinking nothing of it her fault she admitted it she get um and my business partner said don't do that he said it'll um affect our are other cars so we have eight cars anyway as it turns out they're to put the premium up on our other seven cars and our letting agency cars so my name is attached to 14 cars and all 14 cars the insurance would have gone up significantly for five years yeah that when she reversed into me this answering your question is insurance a scam in my answer that is a racket that is yeah that's unreasonable there's no there's no justification for that is there that's terrible yeah so how did it turn out then we didn't claim in the end as usual there's just no point claiming if you look at how much your insurance goes up and for how long if in nearly all instances it seems it's just cheaper to get the car repaired yeah yeah it is someone just keyed my car and and I just got it repaired myself.

17:54I suppose I could have claimed... How much was a repair for keying a car? Oh, luckily, a friend of mine's done it for nothing. But how much would it have cost? Would it have cost 800 quid, maybe? So some jealous person just keyed a new car of yours? Yeah. Yeah, but that's the thing. You have insurance on a car. You buy in peace of mind. Yeah, and then you have to go and repair it yourself. So that means you're paying twice. But this is the world we live in, because then it's also... I just thought about the police force. So you expect that, although in this situation, they did actually come out and offer help, but we had a car stolen from here.

18:30And literally, it was part of it. They got in? No, it was customers. They come in, they were looking over the car, and they're in here. The car was in charge, right? Oh, so people came in pretending to shop for the car. Well, I don't know what the story is. I think they were just here. They found themselves stood in this unit with the keys for the car, which we do. yeah and the car's on charge it wasn't started um they've we looked at one well i say we looked at one of the cameras afterwards we looked at one of the cameras they basically took the car off charge started the engine and drove it out just daylight and we're like wow reported it to the police before i done that i said to my cameraman actually we need to film a video we're gonna go out looking for these guys yeah we need to find the car and hopefully we catch them but either way this is going to make a great YouTube video this is brilliant the only person to get excited if he can't get snicked get the camera it's the end of the day on a Saturday we was about to go home I was like we are not going home we are going to go out and find this car and the end of this video needs to be we found the car yeah so yeah they nicked the car the point there was anyway the reason it sparked me to say this is police I reported it to the police they didn't do anything right it was then on us to find it yeah i put it on social media it got thousands of shares you can imagine it's like someone's nicked one an m3 from calvin yeah um we found out the guys names their addresses and the next day we get a phone call here to say hi we're really sorry we took the car yesterday can we just give it back to you and i was like yeah well the reception rang me i said can we just have this up where are they they said they don't want to see you can they just park it somewhere so they did they parked it in a random spot in milton keynes hid the keys in a park bench and gave you gave my car back so wow so they'd done about 12 miles they didn't even drive anywhere they i think the post must have just blown up their local they were i think they're from luton and the post blew up i think they must have thought shit what have we done i just think i don't actually think they came here with the intention of stealing the car i could be completely wrong but they took the car and the police done nothing and you got it back because of social media you got it back because social media has its upsides it's brilliant i think social media is you know for me it's been nothing but positive so yeah we got the m3 back and we made a great youtube video because the end of the video was the car coming back in on the back of a truck we picked it up we had the keys and we'd done the video.

21:17Nice. Everyone was like, surely this is staged. Surely you haven't had your car stolen and just got it back. But no, it ruined my weekend. I say ruined my weekend. It was an eventful weekend, but I was planning to go away that weekend. That never happened. Right. And I got my own free back. So what would you have done if you'd have caught up with him and he'd have stopped and got out of the car? Would you have got out of the car? 100%. I would have done whatever was required to. Would you have squared up to the guy? 100%. Of course I would have done. I was fuming. I just stole my car. like I'm not gonna tiptoe around it I I I had a baseball bat in my car for that reason like I went there because I'm thinking these guys are Nick McCarr like these they're not they're not they're about it they're obviously on it aren't they they're not gonna phone up tomorrow and say sorry like they did exactly there's no way was that gonna happen like these guys are on it they're car fees they've just stolen my car like the chances are with a bit of confrontation they're gonna they're gonna be on it they're gonna kick off so obviously I was ready you know I was 100%.

22:16I want my car back. And I was willing to do whatever to get it back. So luckily that never happened. I reckon the guy that we spoke to on the phone, I actually did call him back. And he seemed like a nice guy. It wasn't one of the guys that called. It was actually one of their friends that called. But he seemed like a nice guy. He's like, look, we don't want no trouble. Can you just stop with all this social media? Because they were getting harassed. And we just want to give your car back. That's fine. Let's just get the car back. and it made a great video and it's done well like yeah revenue wise and that's the thing with youtube or social media in general negatives are positives yeah the key the car got scratched the the m5 straight away again i was angry like genuinely this is this is petty to some people it's just just a little key scratch just calm down don't matter to me i was fuming and not a lot really annoys me like that i thought i've just moved into my new house this guy's coming along keep my car oh, what's the issue?

23:13What have I done wrong? Is he jealous? What's the problem? But the thing is, I also thought with all this in mind, this is going to make a great YouTube video. And it did. And we raised money for a children's autism charity. We've done a charity fundraiser in the video. We've got the car repaired for free. We're now filming a whole new video on the car, doing more modifications to it, the exhaust included. So off the back of this negative, and I'd like to preach and promote this as much as possible. These negative situations do happen, but I always, always do the best to try and make a positive off the back of it.

23:51Yeah, great. So more about cars later, but there's a big thing going on right now, actually. I'll let you take your water first. No, go on, you hit me. I know exactly where this is going. You know what this is going for. I know exactly where this is going. Go on, hit me with a question. Yeah. What's your take on the GVE scandal that's going around? I don't have enough knowledge on exactly what's happened. So it's very difficult to judge a situation on rumours. Clearly, a lot's gone wrong there, and things don't go wrong for no reason. What do you think's gone wrong? I think what's gone wrong is they're predominantly a salary return business.

24:27Cash flow's a problem, and it's just got out of control. And it's maybe gone on over years where people are like, well, you've sold my car. I don't know this has happened, okay? I don't know this has happened. But assuming that that is the case, where's the money for my car? I'll give it to you next week. Next week never comes. And then another customer, bills come in at the end of the month, got to pay rent, got to pay wages and so on. It's a big business. It's an expensive business. And maybe it's just a case of poor money management. I don't personally fit. I've met David myself. I think you have as well.

25:08Yeah, I like David. I didn't get any. like bad feeling no i got a pretty decent vibe from him yeah and i think again going back to meeting people when i buy cars gut instincts everything in it and my gut feeling on david is i think he's a really good guy yeah and i feel like maybe um it's just spiraled out spiraled out maybe they've had they had an investor and investors pulled money out i don't know the story so it's really difficult to judge it's a horrible situation for both the business and the customers because if customers have lost cars which it's looking like that has happened that is bad that's horrible it's horrific yeah but but there's no but it's terrible yeah it's terrible and what do you think about a lot of people jumping on it and you know there's a lot of people i feel that are just talking about it so they can blow up their own channel and making a lot of assumptions i mean i think this is important to talk about because it's happening right now Business is hard.

26:03The UK is a hard place to do business. Running a car business is hard. I don't have a problem talking about it, but I'm not going to go live, you know, speculating and, you know, criticizing them all. But there's a few people doing that. There is, yeah. What do you think about that? I think whatever people want to do to attract attention to themselves, fair play to them, if that's what they want to do. I think it's a bit, like, personally, I'd find it a bit, I don't know, a little bit degrading. But then if it's personal, and you've got a personal, because it could be then it's fair enough in it if i've got resentment towards someone on social media and i feel like my way of dealing with that resentment is being vocal about it on my platforms then that's that's all right i think but um if it's just for a bit of clout bit of drama well that's what people do that's social media that's the world we're in isn't it yeah expect it like if you mess up if something goes wrong whether i do it post a court case video people are like oh look at him he's in court you know people love to talk about shit going wrong don't they do you like that about social media yeah yeah i do not even from an entertainment point of view i think social media is it's all got out of control everyone's being vocal about everything you see that like the charlie kirk thing you know he's gone mad he's just been killed because he's being vocal and you know this is the world that we're in and everyone's been and i think you You should be able to scroll through social media and not be triggered by anything because none of it's personal.

27:34But that's hard to do nowadays, isn't it? It is. I don't know. I don't know. It is. I don't find that difficult. No. I don't find that difficult. So what I really like is that you give away a lot of cars. I think that's really cool. And, you know, that's easy for massive global companies to do, but you're an entrepreneur. So how many cars have you given away? We were doing a car a month. We've built ourselves up to now a car a week. Wow. So it may be 100 cars. You've given away 100 cars. Well, given away, but the platform generates revenue. Yeah. And the revenue goes back into the platform and it allows us to buy more cars.

28:13Yeah. So we work hard to create exposure for that platform. Yeah. And yeah, as a result of the funds, we buy cars. It gives us content. So we just bought that M2. Video's going live on that tomorrow. Right. We bought that from BMW. £50 ,000 that car was. The revenues come from people supporting Planet of Dreams. So, and then off the back of it, so we do loads of content on that car. Right, so you make enough money to be able to give away a car a week. Yeah, of course, because if I didn't make enough... That's impressive though. Yeah, it is. It's really impressive. We've been doing it a long time.

28:46It started probably five years ago. So I guess when you gave away your first car, you must have been shitting yourself a bit. You might lose money. The way it started was, so I put all of my YouTube ad revenue into the pot. And I've done that for a long time. And I gave away all my ad revenue to build up the platform. What, you were just giving it away to people who follow Planet of Dreams? Yeah. So you subscribe to Planet of Dreams. You can enter for free. You can still enter for free now. Right. And people are winning stuff for free. So how do you pay for the cars if they can enter for free?

29:18Through subscriptions. Right, okay. We've done a subscription, a paid service. Yeah. Which obviously generated revenue. and then we so people subscribe and then they get x amount of entries entries to each prize on the site you can also buy additional entries so if you want to buy more you can yeah um which we introduced later on down the line because it was got to the point where we're giving away all this money and it's you know it's a big hole and the more revenue you've got of course the better prizes you can get the better content we just bought this r8 bought it off matt food review club you know yeah yeah we bought that for matt right and it's more exciting and you're going to give that r8 yeah yeah and the plan is just keep going with it get money coming give bigger cars away yeah i want to keep going yeah yeah yeah because it's exciting and like and you do and that's another business separate it's separate to calvin's car diary and binker and binker wow completely separate and how do you manage all these businesses then i've got an amazing team one of five brothers uh four of us work on the businesses together and each one of us runs a different team and it just works brilliantly and how does it feel when you give away cars because i just saw the guys yeah you see them you see it there it's amazing yeah they're just so like they're happy like for them that was their childhood dream car the guy there uh he owns a mark free golf vr6 he's now selling that car to his new baby if you like it's that mark ii gulf gti which has got an R32 engine under the bonnet.

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32:05Now remember, do not invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. This is not investment advice and it is not recommendation to buy or sell any particular digital asset. So, red flags. Someone wants to buy a car. What are like the three main red flags you can spot pretty quickly when you're buying a car? I suppose, I think you've just got to do all of your obvious visual checks with a car. So you can see paintwork. Paintwork's an obvious thing. Not everyone will be able to notice paintwork, but you can see if panels are out of line.

32:41Bad paintwork. Poor previous repairs. under the bonnet even like it's quite an old-fashioned I was going to say you know dip the oil cream in the cap oily water in expansion tank again like judging the person you're buying from and that's quite hard because there's a lot of good small dealers out there and you've got to install with retail in general you've got to install confidence in that buyer it's so important So if that seller, if you're a consumer and you're buying a car and that seller's not, you don't feel confident in buying from this person, then don't buy from them. I obviously work with Car Vertical.

33:23They sponsor my channel. Do your checks. Again, it's super important. You're buying yourself peace of mind there. So visual checks, the person, and your online history check. Yeah. And are miles believable now in a car?

33:44Again, people do put blockers on cars. Yeah, you've got to be conscious of that. You've got to check the wear on the steering wheel, the wear on the seat, the wear on the gear knob, you know. So it's history on the car. You can take a car to a main dealer if you're concerned about the mileage on that car and get it to plug it in. They can do a gearbox reading. But then there's even ways around that. So I would say mileage is probably more common than we all realise, people blocking mileage. Right. Right. But what can you do in that situation? You've just got to, again, judge it with your own instinct and hope it's all good.

34:19Right. You've sold thousands of cars. How would you buy a bargain? Like I said earlier, my personal, it's not even about bargain. My personal preferred way to buy a car is from a private seller. Because you've got to understand, you're offering them a service. So they want a convenient sale. and you know they want out of their car today they want money in their bank today and they value that a lot of people will say to us i want to sell my car to you because i don't want to stick it on ebay i don't want people coming around my house i want people test driving it and i don't know who i'm me i don't know how they're going to pay for it so um buying privately is really good and book value we use book values and every car's got a book value if you're buying within your book book value it's a nice car generally you'll earn money there's no like there must be some just ways you can talk to people and or ways to notice if they're like a motivated seller in the property world you have motivated sellers distressed sellers and desperate sellers and the lower they are down likely the cheaper you're going to get the property is there a way to find that i suppose urgency is the most like some people might say i need to sell my car today i know it books at six grand i'm picking up my new car in the morning can you give me five and half grand for it for example like right urgency is usually quite a a big one but i think people got so many options to sell a car now that even the days of you know back in the day when people would just get a car for cheap and and no one know about it then days are i'm not saying they're done with but people just go online we buy any car car well whatever get valuation but don't they give you like really low money though they don't all give you low money no they do offer you reasonable money yeah it goes um motorway car well they go to an online auction and they you know traders will bid against each other so yeah i think the consumer now which has been a bit of a problem i would say for the used car market for for car dealers the consumer's got a lot of options to sell their car which took for a long time it took a lot of profit out of the the car trade because people like motorway whatever all these uh car dealers across the country rather than buying straight from the private seller now they're having to bid and fight against each other on these online platforms the consumer's the winner there yeah because the traders then got to pay top money for that car get it back to a site prep it retail it get margin out of it it's um yeah and the consumer's more knowledgeable nowadays yeah I would say so yeah yeah has the car business got harder because it felt like after lockdown everyone was a car business dealer like everyone was a watch trader because obviously every all the prices were going up and now it looks like the tide's gone out and they're all naked yeah I think I think what's happened in the car market so yeah it was like that in the lockdown it was amazing uh after that there was this big adjustment like last year year before there was book prices were falling because of this big high during lockdown book prices were falling confidence in the market we sell a lot of sports cars yeah sports cars the market wasn't wasn't as good i'm not saying it was terrible it wasn't as good the electric car market they would generally drop by about a third your average electric car which was again a big impact on the car market that all happened and whilst that was happening i just found that margins were really really small right last year for us as a business was tough yeah i don't know if it's personal to us the stars are aligning i don't know what it is but um the margins now were you know they're better buying is a bit a lot easier on the sales side everything's selling like just cars are flying out it's been it's been really good if you had the choice between selling one ferrari or 10 fords what would you think is easier i personally prefer to buy 10 forwards So you think it'd be easier to sell 10 Fords than one Ferrari?

38:27I can only talk from experience. My experience with high-end cars, I say high-end, over 100 grand cars, hasn't been that great. And I suppose also going back to our journey as buyers, as car traders, working with the money that we've got available. Well, if you've got 100 grand to buy one Ferrari, I always look at that as 10 Fiestas. Right, so it's risk because it's all in one car. Yeah, and the market's active. Not to say the market's not active in a Ferrari, but it's just not a market that I know. So we just stick to sort of sub-50 grand sports cars and a lot of run-of-the-mill stuff as well.

39:08You know, like BMW 1 Series, Nissan Qashqai, there's a couple there looking at a Volvo. Yeah. Yeah, I just prefer, if I had pot loads of money, my mindset might be different. Yeah, yeah. And do you own all this stock or is this sale or return some of this? We don't do many sale returns purely because it's just, I'd rather buy. You get the deal done, get that customer out of your life. If it's a higher value car. Get that customer out of your life. I mean it, yeah. Because if you do a sale or return deal. Oh, they're phoning you every five minutes. They're phoning you all the time. Then they want to know why it hasn't sold.

39:48It's hard work. It can be. It can be hard work. Then when you've got a buyer on that car, you then got to make a deal between the buyer and the seller. Whereas when you own the car, you've just got to deal with the seller. Sorry, the buyer even. So not to say we don't do seller returns because there'd be a lot of cases where if it's a car that's maybe in excess of£50 ,000, we're going to use your Aston Martin again as an example, then I might think, well, you know what? I'd rather not put 70 grand into that car. Let me just have a chat with Rob about getting it on as a seller return because I'd rather keep that 70 grand and spend it on seven boards.

40:23I would. I actually would. But as we grow, even as we grow now, our mindset is buying higher value cars because generally, a lot of them, manufacturer warranties, I'm looking around, they're not all manufacturer warranty cars, but manufacturer warranties are obviously good. Newer cars, less likely to go wrong, just less problems. Yeah, because I heard a bit of a whisper that you're going to get into the supercar market. Is that right? Yeah, so we are trying to just edge our way up. We're trying to make, you know, I say that. We want to do that. We want to not supercar market, just level up in value.