A huge storm has erupted in the UK over the highly misleading practice of hiding the identity of ex-rental cars unwittingly bought by the public from official dealerships, paying thousands of dollars more than their real worth.<\/p>\n
The UK tabloid newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, reports that it is a widespread practice for car rental companies to register their cars under an ‘innocent’ business name, and then pass their used stock onto the public as a ‘one owner vehicle’.<\/p>\n
Of<\/em> course <\/em>it’s a one owner vehicle! But with many tens or hundreds of drivers, some of whom love to thrash rental cars!<\/p>\n Had the cars been honestly revealed as ex-rental cars they would have commanded thousands of dollars less in the market place.<\/p>\n The Daily Telegraph claims that two of the UK’s biggest car hire firms used a ‘front’ company name to register vehicles, meaning buyers didn’t recognise the ‘real’ previous owner from the registration documents.<\/p>\n The most controversial cases involve cars that were previously hired out by National Car Rental, which is owned by Europcar, Britains biggest car hire company, which has a fleet totalling 54,000.<\/p>\n The company registered the vehicles in the name of Provincial Securities Ltd. a compnay it owns that did no business.<\/p>\n Can it, does it happen here?<\/p>\n Well, frankly we don’t know. We hope not, but that’s a wish, not a certainty.<\/p>\n