Anyone in Bermuda who has ever struggled to buy a second-hand car or sell their own could be forgiven for emitting a small cheer when they learn about the new certified pre-owned division at Auto Solutions.
No more searching the small ads for a used car and worrying whether it’s been well looked after or having to deal with potential buyers coming to your house and haggling over price.
The “hassle” of all that, as well as the time spent at TCD, is removed, according to Damien Donfield, the company’s certified pre-owned sales specialist, who worked at a multi-franchise dealer in Dublin for three decades before coming to the island.
“It’s peace of mind,” he said, explaining how every car sold by the division has been given a “comprehensive, multi-point health check and safety test” and comes with a warranty for 12 months or 12,000km – whichever comes first – from the date you buy it.
Auto Solutions managing director Glen Smith added: “It’s taken a lot of the uncertainty away.”
Mr Smith said the company lobbied the Government for several years for permission to sell second-hand cars.
Last year, a pilot scheme was agreed on and it has gone really well.
“I’m quite confident that it will go into a long-term change,” he added.
He said Mr Donfield “built the business from the ground up” after arriving in April 2023 and it had gone from strength to strength since launching in July.
“We have a litany of clients that want certified, pre-owned vehicles,” said Mr Smith, explaining that Auto Solutions can take in and resell up to 20 cars a month at present.
Mr Donfield added: “We’re matching cars to clients. At the moment we are pre-selling a lot of our stock.
“We are struggling to get enough cars. We need more cars all the time.”
Auto Solutions customers can trade-in or sell their cars, eight years or younger, to the company, providing they have a full service history and no previous heavy costs for bodywork.
The certified pre-owned team will evaluate the vehicle’s condition, age, mileage and market value before providing a price.
The division’s motto is that every car sold is a new car to the person buying it.
“Even though they are second-hand cars, it’s your money and they need to look well,” said Mr Donfield.
“We want the car mechanically sound. We have a service history, so we can see the history and the path that it has taken to this stage.
“We prepare the bodywork. The idea is that everything about the car, from the physical to the mechanical, is in as much of a new condition as it’s possible to get.”
He added: “Just because they are three, four, five, six years old, shouldn’t mean they should be any less desirable.”
Mr Smith said a major benefit was that Auto Solutions dealt with all the paperwork, from the TCD transfer test to insurance.
“We do everything, soup to nuts,” he said. “We are here to facilitate a service that has been needed for a long time, of taking the hassle away.”
Mr Donfield said many locals found the idea of buying a second-hand car from a dealer “unusual” but had embraced it.
“We are not reinventing the wheel but a lot of people wouldn’t have come across it before,” he said.
“Everything we’ve sold so far, it has gone well. If a customer has been decent enough to come to Auto Solutions to get their car serviced, we are now passing on that investment to the new buyer.”
