sorry, still sounds like buyers remorse to me

looking at the current crop of 130's available here now for the same year (all higher KM), yours was seriously cheap, 2k cheaper then the next cheapest, so 20% cheaper, didn't that set alarm bells ringing????

the price was originally higher (11500). Didn't you ever negotiate?

btw I had a backup car in case this would failed and I negotiated the second one as well from 12k to 10k. Everyone is trying to pump up as much as possible from the car but when serious offer comes, they're usually able to go down. Nothing suspicious about it.

i'd be very wary if a seller was prepared to knock 10% off the already cheapest one available at the time

what colour is it ?

I'm not saying 10k is nothing, I'm saying 10k for a car is nothing here

All the time. But for a used item, if I can get the seller to go way below the average market value of the item then the alarm bells go off, and I presume that what I'm going to end up with is probably worth... less than what he's willing to let it go for.

I'm not that good at bargaining, perhaps that's why I've never been ripped off.

here's a pic of a 1 series where the airbags have deployed, notice the steering wheel is now split and the dashboard is damaged, when the airbag deployed in our car it also smashed the windscreen, so if your car doesn't have, at the very least, a new steering wheel center or new passenger airbag cover then they aint gone off

You been driving too fast again BB ?

The pressure wave seems to have made his photo larger...

always, but it was my mrs driving at the time

car was 2 years old and was written off due to the airbags deploying, just for some context



and that's the kinda damage needed



that was BB1

Blame the wife, right...

if I'd crashed her car I wouldn't be able to type this

Alright, let's cut OP some slack here. They hoped they could get a nice and well maintained car and were slightly cheated at least. OP, take it this way, in the grand scheme of things, all you lost is some money, which you'll regain and you gained some experience, which is for life. As others have written, trying to pursue this beyond some serious sounding registered letters is futile and will cost more than what you can recover in any case. Worst case is you just compound your losses. Lawyer and court fees are going to be a significant percentage of your car's value.

Unfortunately, the notion of the "meticulously maintained and barely driven Swiss car" applies (if at all), only to higher end cars (>100k). Even then, it is usually better to buy such cars in Germany where they are bound to be cheaper. We understand that 10k is no small amount of money, but a car like that is not going to be anyone's well kept darling. At best it is going to be some lucky teenager's first set of wheels.

so what have you decided to do then ?

Perhaps Vaud is different. Here in Zürich most "beaters" get taken to the former east block. Some of them are obviously dealers they arrive with a transporter of some kind (4 guys in the cab, sometimes a minivan full of footmen) and they do the rounds at all the shops in the industrial areas, bargaining hard and paying cash, until they've got a full complement. One of their first questions is if the car runs well enough to make it to wherever they're from (if the car can be driven then a footman drives it back, otherwise it goes on the transporter).

But it's also not unusual to have some individual wander in and ask if you've got anything for export.

It's quite fun to watch them loading the transporter up, particularly if it isn't a proper transporter. I've seen a flatbed on a flatbed with two cars sitting on top with the rear tires of the upper rearmost car only contacting the flatbed with a couple of molecules of rubber.

I'll have to ask one of the dealers if they only do this in Switzerland next time. I did ask once how much they make on a car, once they've got it back home and sold it. He said he was between 30 and 50% on his money... but he paused for a long time before answering, so I suspect he was evaluating if that meant we would ask for more money.

__________________
If everyone you know agrees with you consistently, they are either not listening, or not capable of critical thought.

They are partial to high mileage but good condition VW group cars (especially Audis) and 3.0 BMW diesels. There is good margin on those.

The big issue, as you know, is that it costs time (and therefore labour costs) to get a car through an MFK. The value in an older car in CH is the fresh MFK. That's not an issue when they can replace a wheel bearing for 100eur !

Had a chat with a Hungarian guy once, who was also doing this. He'd look through websites like ricardo, and once he found something he liked, he'd hop on the night train and then drive the car back the next day.
He seemed to know his stuff (ex racing driver), and from the gold chains and gold rings he was wearing, he wasn't poor...

Yes. The place I'm usually at is actually two garages sharing the same space. One is Alfa and oldtimers, the other VW/Audi. They scarper pretty fast when you say "This is the Alfa side, VW is over there." If you've got your head under an Alfa or Jag bonnet they don't even approach you.

For those asking why someone would travel from CZ to CH for a car. There is a perhaps misconceived notion that the Swiss look after their cars better than others. You can also find more higher-specced cars (e.g.a 130i M-Sport vs a 116i SE) floating around for decent prices as top spec models are not a rarity, hence supply is plentiful and prices are relatively low.

The car dealership I usually go to actually complains about this, as people come looking for a bargain which is not something they are used to giving!

I think it's pretty universal that you can export without safety inspection, it's the inspection on IMPORT that you can't get around. As far as I know this is the case in pretty much all of Europe. The inspection might be less stringent in some countries, but that's not really to anyone's benefit.