A reader called Mary McCarthy bought a brand "new" unregistered car from a dealership in October 2010 and recently she noticed that all four tyres on the car were cracked despite the fact that there was still lots of thread on all four." I brought the car into the dealership and enquired as to what the problem was. I was initially told by the dealership that I would need four new tyres. When I asked another person to look at the car, they advised me that the tyres were 1108 manufactured tyres," she writes. This means they were made in the eleventh week of 2008.
So she went back to the dealership and asked how tyres manufactured in 2008 could be on her 2010 car. "After three days the dealership told me that the car was manufactured in 2008. They said that it was quite normal in the car industry." Now she wants to know if it is normal for a dealership to sell a car manufactured in 2008 as a 2010 car. "At no point was I told that the car was manufactured in 2008, in fact the year of manufacture on the registration certificate says 2010. I wouldn't have bought the car if I had known it was sitting in a warehouse or doing the rounds of other dealerships for two years before it came to me. This helps explain how the tyres were cracked as they are actually five years old as opposed to three."
She says she understands that there is a manufacture and shipping process but says she would have thought that two years was excessive and that the very least she should have been told that the car was manufactured in 2008.
We called the Society of the Irish Motor Industry to find out if this indeed was the norm. A spokeswoman said the two years in storage seemed unusually long and cares would normally be held for between three and six months before being sold.
