An inspection is not a checklist. It is an argument the car has with itself, and our job is to listen carefully enough to hear which side is winning.
Every motor car that arrives at Three Ten — whether it has come to us via valuation, part-exchange, or as a sourced car for a customer — passes a 152-point inspection before it is photographed. The list is long. Most of it is not interesting. Mileage, tread depth, MOT status, key count, the usual.
The interesting parts are the bits that don't fit on a sheet of paper.
WHAT WE LOOK FOR
A car that has been looked after will say so quietly. The bolts on the suspension turrets will be the right colour. The fluids will be at level and the right colour. The seat-belt stalks will have wear consistent with the mileage, and so will the steering wheel rim.
A car that has not been looked after will say that quietly, too. Mismatched fasteners, where someone has done an exhaust and lost the original. A slightly different shade of black plastic in one wheel-arch liner. A wiper-arm that has been replaced but the bolt put back without the torque it deserved.
We turn cars away. Not many — most cars that reach us have already been through one filter or another — but enough that "152 points" is not a marketing line. It is the floor below which we will not list a car. Around one in eight cars offered to us at trade does not make it past this stage.
What it isn't
The inspection does not tell you the car will never break down. No inspection can. What it tells you is that, on the day this car was photographed and listed, a technician with thirty years on his card was satisfied — and that the things he was looking for were the things you would want him to look for.
If he wasn't, the car would still be in the workshop, or quietly returned to the trade auction it came from. We do not list cars we wouldn't buy ourselves. The hangar is too small, and the years too long, for that.
