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Mike Brewer Motors

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2016 12:43 pm
by rdssdi
Apparently Mike from Wheeler Dealers owns a used car dealership. Located in Sheffield on Bramall Lane.

He lists cars for sale with financing. One assumes the financing is the major profit center.

Brewer had one show where a 1967 Camaro was restored at Mikes Muscle car Garage in Welwyn Garden City in Herfordshire (wherever that is). They import and restore american muscle cars. I had a 1969 Camaro in High School. It was a year old and was painted in Hugger Orange with the obligatory black vinyl roof, 4 speed Muncie, no A/C with positraction. Those were the days.

Bob

Re: Mike Brewer Motors

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2016 1:48 pm
by Grizzly
A good friend recently bought a car from Mike Brewers place in Sheffield, they sell some nice cars there but there all about 3 years old (Landrover,Audi,BMW Merc etc)

He's done well out of Wheeler dealers..

http://www.mikebrewermotors.com/

I think this is the shop involved in Mike Brewers SS but i'm not sure how much he actually has to do with the place (may be wrong but i don't think Brewer owns it, when you read the blog on the SS they make it sound like he is a customer)

http://www.musclecargarageuk.co.uk/

Re: Mike Brewer Motors

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2016 2:03 pm
by rdssdi
There are similar dealers here in the U.S.. My assumption is they are selling "off lease" cars.

I purchase my automobiles new and keep them for 6 to 10 years. Luckily I do not drive many miles per year. It would not be economically feasible for me to sell or trade the car in 2 or 3 years. I believe many people lease as they consider a lease paying for the several years depreciation solely and then move on to another new leased vehicle. With the complexity of new cars it may be a good idea to move on in 3 years. Servicing could become an expensive proposition.

In some leases, possibly most, having an accident, even if repaired, results in a charge from the lessor. This will undoubtedly lead some people with leased cars to have accident repairs accomplished outside insurance. Therefore never shown on the cars accident history.

With difficult to repair (properly) alloy chassis cars such as the Lotus and Aston Martin, hiding an accident history could be beneficial to resale price. I do wonder when I see a year or two old Elise for sale.

Bob

Re: Mike Brewer Motors

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2016 7:31 pm
by Grizzly
I worked at an Approved Body-shop for a few years, it's almost impossible to repair an Elise chassis and in my day 90% of the chassis damaged cars wouldn't make it past the estimate stage. Considering how much a Clam shell covers and how unpredictable/twitchy they get when driven hard i wouldn't be shocked if there was allot of badly repaired cars out there.

Re: Mike Brewer Motors

PostPosted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 2:20 pm
by The Veg
rdssdi wrote:With the complexity of new cars it may be a good idea to move on in 3 years. Servicing could become an expensive proposition.


I don't fully agree. You may be correct about high-end sports cars, which quite frankly, often seem a bit ambitious from an engineering standpoint when you consider the small companies that make them, but for 'regular' cars it's not true at all. Sure, they have more sensors, computers, servos, etc., but they still also have most of the same old bits between all that stuff, and many bits are either maintenance-free now or very close to it (for instance chassis-lube-jobs have gone the way of the buggy-whip).

In 2002 I bought a brand-new VW GTI, the one with the 1.8 turbo engine. I'd say that it was wonderfully reliable until it was about six years old, and then the decrepitude began to creep in. Now the 'average' owner would have traded it at five years and paid somebody else to do all that maintenance and repairs, but I'm the 'keep 'em until they die' type too and I do my own work on them as much as I can. The cambelt service on that car was a total pig of a job, although still orders of magnitude easier than that of the Esprit I used to have.Around age 7 it began to have some other problems too, like a crank-position sensor that failed, and shortly after that, one of the ignition coil-packs would blow about every 10K miles. The crank sensor is very easy to renew, but you need an OBD-interface to diagnose it. No big deal; it's just another tool. I got an interface cable and software that worked with my existing laptop computer for $250. Around the same age, several plastic cooling-system components began to fail, as did the breather-plumbing. I repaired all that easily, and in fact I saved 90% on the breather repair by using components from Home Depot instead of VW parts! It looked ghetto as hell, but it worked and was LOTS more durable than the OEM parts. In January 2013 the GTi ate its cambelt while on the way to the office one morning, with about 165K miles on the clock. It's a 20-valve, 'interference' head design, so I didn't even bother thinking about repairing it, as even doing all the work myself it would have cost more than the car was worth.

By contrast, in 1999 my mother bought a new Mazda MPV. It has about 50K on it as she's retired and lives in a small city, but keep in mind that this means that it never really gets thoroughly warmed-up and sees virtually no highway-miles. It's still in good shape, and in 17 years it's troubles have amounted to:

1) Some carbon build-up in the throttle-body a few years ago that caused some slight sticking, cleaned-out by the local Firestone garage and no problem since.
2) The driver-door's electric lock makes a bit of a howl when it actuates- but still functions just fine.
3) Some very slow seepage from the oil pan gasket. Bit of kitty-litter on the garage floor is the worst from that.

And then there's my friend Duane. He bought a Toyota Camry around 2002, new, and it was pretty much flawless. Other than regular maintenance, all it ever needed was a few lamps here and there. When those started needing renewal he joked about what an unreliable POS his car was turning into. Last year he traded it -at over 300K miles- for a Ford Fusion hybrid, which Duane (who is in his 70s) thinks is a computer posing as a car but he can't shut up about how great it is. High praise considering that he thought his Camry was the most perfect vehicle ever devised.