I want to make a statement about Stevens 300zx. I have deliberately not commented on his thread, initially out of respect to him as he fully deserves the sympathy he has received, and I did not want to cloud his thread, and latterly because I was aware this issue was to be discussed at the AGM.
I want to point out that I am not a car dealer, just an enthusiast like the rest of you, and someone who had some spare cash and thought it would be a good idea to get some clean cars in from japan to help fellow members and new potential owners get into Z ing.
I have in the past 3 years brought over 15 cars and 13 of them have followed my tried and trusted format. Where I buy the car, take all of the risk, and when it arrives pay for everything that needs doing before I place it for sale, and then take any profit or loss after the sale. This involves probably not seeing any return on my money for at least 6 months
Just twice have I offered to do things differently to try and help others save some money on costs and twice this has backfired. The difference being that they decide which car to go for, how much to spend, and pay up front once the car is won. I take a fee for doing all of the admin, my time and fuel, collecting the car from the docks and delivering to wherever.
Steven contacted me with a specific specification in mind, and initially was looking at a car he had seen on a Japanese Dealers site. He asked me if I could find out more about the car, and get some better pictures. I spent the next few days trying to get what he had asked and eventually got loads of pictures and a better description for him. He wanted me to try to negotiate a better price with the seller. In the meantime one had come up on the auction website and I mentioned this to Steven. Showed him the pictures that were available and got a translation of the auction sheet for him from the export company I use in Japan
Interior C, first registered December 1996, 5-speed manual gearbox, AC, power seat, power windows, original alloy wheels, one owner, fully repainted from unknown colour to white, only exterior has been repainted, paintwork uneven, steering wheel worn, driver's seat has 10 centimetre cut et cetera, driver's seat sagging, part of tonneau cover worn and cracked, wheels scratched, scratches and dents, roof and bonnet painted in different colour, paintwork uneven on roof and bonnet, rear wiper missing, other marks as per map
Steven discussed the pro’s and cons with me, and told me that he had some new seats and wheels so the issues with the current ones didn’t matter. I told him that I could get a local body shop who I use to paint the bonnet and roof back to white for him for a cash deal of £300. At no time in our correspondence did I say anything like, Go for this one or any other words that would encourage him to spend his money on this particular car, and this was because it was not for me to decide on what and how much he should spend his money on.
What was pretty clear from the translation and other info was that this was a late model with no rust and very low mileage a very solid foundation for a great car indeed
Steven decided he wanted to go for this one and set his limit that he wanted to spend. I said I would place that amount for him.
Prior to the auction Steven contacted me and said he had seen the same car with a different auction sheet and what did I think. I told him that I would have that translated as well, and this is what came back
The main difference seems to be that on the car map today there is some Japanese written on the roof and on the bonnet which says "different colour". The previous one shows lots of dots on the left front and right front doors, and this one still shows dots but they are written in more faintly. The other one shows U2 on the side steps which this one does not. This one shows medium cracks on the rear reflector, which the other one does not. When I look at cars in the auction myself, even U2 can be quite hard to see, so it is not too surprising to me that these inspectors have noticed some slightly different issues at that kind of level. What I would do is I would combine the information from both and use that to make a judgement
I passed this information on to Steven and asked him what he wanted to do. He said that he still wanted to go ahead with the bid. The auction was around 5am if I remember correctly so I got up to see if Steven had won the car. I received a message from Japan stating that we had the highest bid, but the car had not reached the reserve. I contacted Steven and asked him what he would like to do. He decided that he would make a larger offer and so I presented this to the export company. They came back a while later saying the offer had been refused
I told Steven I was surprised by this particularly because of the paint issue and also mentioned that if no one else came up with the reserve the car would probably be back on auction within a week. Steven decided to have one more go at winning the car with a second offer, and asked me what we should do if this was refused. I said that I felt we should walk away and he agreed. As it happens his offer was accepted
I want to stress at this point that Steven has seen exactly what I had seen, read exactly what I had read before deciding to place a bid. Nothing was withheld from him, and all of his questions received a timely response from me.
Prior to the car being shipped, the export company took around 30 photo’s of the car, and emailed them to me. I forwarded them on to Steven immediately and he was really happy with them and the car.
When I collected the car from the docks I didn’t really have time to examine it as I was on a time limit having already collected one earlier, so I loaded it on to the trailer and drove it straight to the garage I use for Fog Light and MOT purposes, unloaded it and took the trailer home, drove back to find that Steven had arrived and was looking over the car. We looked at the white paintwork and it was not good at all. Steven’s descriptions of it are accurate, it looked very poor and looked to have been hand sprayed without much attempt to mask certain areas. The rest you all know about.
No one could have predicted the paintwork would have been so bad, nothing either of had seen in pictures showed this . the auction sheet showed ‘uneven paintwork’ without going into any more detail, so it was not obvious to anyone.
I am truly distraught for Steven as I know how much he wanted this to be his dream car. I realise he wants someone to blame for this and I clearly am the first choice, but the fact remains that if the translation had said very poor hand painted, instead of uneven paintwork, then I suspect both of us wouldn’t be talking about this as there would have been NO BID
I want to make a statement about Stevens 300zx. I have deliberately not commented on his thread, initially out of respect to him as he fully deserves the sympathy he has received, and I did not want to cloud his thread, and latterly because I was aware this issue was to be discussed at the AGM.
I want to point out that I am not a car dealer, just an enthusiast like the rest of you, and someone who had some spare cash and thought it would be a good idea to get some clean cars in from japan to help fellow members and new potential owners get into Z ing.
I have in the past 3 years brought over 15 cars and 13 of them have followed my tried and trusted format. Where I buy the car, take all of the risk, and when it arrives pay for everything that needs doing before I place it for sale, and then take any profit or loss after the sale. This involves probably not seeing any return on my money for at least 6 months
Just twice have I offered to do things differently to try and help others save some money on costs and twice this has backfired. The difference being that they decide which car to go for, how much to spend, and pay up front once the car is won. I take a fee for doing all of the admin, my time and fuel, collecting the car from the docks and delivering to wherever.
Steven contacted me with a specific specification in mind, and initially was looking at a car he had seen on a Japanese Dealers site. He asked me if I could find out more about the car, and get some better pictures. I spent the next few days trying to get what he had asked and eventually got loads of pictures and a better description for him. He wanted me to try to negotiate a better price with the seller. In the meantime one had come up on the auction website and I mentioned this to Steven. Showed him the pictures that were available and got a translation of the auction sheet for him from the export company I use in Japan
Interior C, first registered December 1996, 5-speed manual gearbox, AC, power seat, power windows, original alloy wheels, one owner, fully repainted from unknown colour to white, only exterior has been repainted, paintwork uneven, steering wheel worn, driver's seat has 10 centimetre cut et cetera, driver's seat sagging, part of tonneau cover worn and cracked, wheels scratched, scratches and dents, roof and bonnet painted in different colour, paintwork uneven on roof and bonnet, rear wiper missing, other marks as per map
Steven discussed the pro’s and cons with me, and told me that he had some new seats and wheels so the issues with the current ones didn’t matter. I told him that I could get a local body shop who I use to paint the bonnet and roof back to white for him for a cash deal of £300. At no time in our correspondence did I say anything like, Go for this one or any other words that would encourage him to spend his money on this particular car, and this was because it was not for me to decide on what and how much he should spend his money on.
What was pretty clear from the translation and other info was that this was a late model with no rust and very low mileage a very solid foundation for a great car indeed
Steven decided he wanted to go for this one and set his limit that he wanted to spend. I said I would place that amount for him.
Prior to the auction Steven contacted me and said he had seen the same car with a different auction sheet and what did I think. I told him that I would have that translated as well, and this is what came back
The main difference seems to be that on the car map today there is some Japanese written on the roof and on the bonnet which says "different colour". The previous one shows lots of dots on the left front and right front doors, and this one still shows dots but they are written in more faintly. The other one shows U2 on the side steps which this one does not. This one shows medium cracks on the rear reflector, which the other one does not. When I look at cars in the auction myself, even U2 can be quite hard to see, so it is not too surprising to me that these inspectors have noticed some slightly different issues at that kind of level. What I would do is I would combine the information from both and use that to make a judgement
I passed this information on to Steven and asked him what he wanted to do. He said that he still wanted to go ahead with the bid. The auction was around 5am if I remember correctly so I got up to see if Steven had won the car. I received a message from Japan stating that we had the highest bid, but the car had not reached the reserve. I contacted Steven and asked him what he would like to do. He decided that he would make a larger offer and so I presented this to the export company. They came back a while later saying the offer had been refused
I told Steven I was surprised by this particularly because of the paint issue and also mentioned that if no one else came up with the reserve the car would probably be back on auction within a week. Steven decided to have one more go at winning the car with a second offer, and asked me what we should do if this was refused. I said that I felt we should walk away and he agreed. As it happens his offer was accepted
I want to stress at this point that Steven has seen exactly what I had seen, read exactly what I had read before deciding to place a bid. Nothing was withheld from him, and all of his questions received a timely response from me.
Prior to the car being shipped, the export company took around 30 photo’s of the car, and emailed them to me. I forwarded them on to Steven immediately and he was really happy with them and the car.
When I collected the car from the docks I didn’t really have time to examine it as I was on a time limit having already collected one earlier, so I loaded it on to the trailer and drove it straight to the garage I use for Fog Light and MOT purposes, unloaded it and took the trailer home, drove back to find that Steven had arrived and was looking over the car. We looked at the white paintwork and it was not good at all. Steven’s descriptions of it are accurate, it looked very poor and looked to have been hand sprayed without much attempt to mask certain areas. The rest you all know about.
No one could have predicted the paintwork would have been so bad, nothing either of had seen in pictures showed this . the auction sheet showed ‘uneven paintwork’ without going into any more detail, so it was not obvious to anyone.
I am truly distraught for Steven as I know how much he wanted this to be his dream car. I realise he wants someone to blame for this and I clearly am the first choice, but the fact remains that if the translation had said very poor hand painted, instead of uneven paintwork, then I suspect both of us wouldn’t be talking about this as there would have been NO BID