Why a safety is not enough to feel secure about buying a car and why getting a purchase inspection done is important.

“Yes, it has a safety, but that does not mean it ‘s worth buying.”

So you have found the car that fits your needs and your budget.  Not always easy to find so you are excited that it has a valid safety in the province of Manitoba so you trust that it is a good car and no further action to have the vehicle inspected is required.  This is not true.

The safety inspection program was not designed to ensure that the car you purchase is a good buy, only that at the time of the inspection that it was safe to be on the road.  Without a passed safety you are unable to insure the vehicle in Manitoba.

Here are some of the reasons that you cannot rely on the safety to qualify the condition of the vehicle that you wish to purchase and keep for some time.

In Manitoba the safety is valid for 1 year, unlimited mileage, from the time of inspection.  This means that during the 12 months after the inspection was done the vehicle can be sold and the inspection does not have to be redone as long as it is a Manitoba safety inspection and not one from a different province or country. 

A lot of things can wear out over this time period which would not pass a safety if one was to be redone such as suspension, brakes and exhaust.

The safety criteria are based on minimum specifications to pass.  For example, a brake pad will pass if it is more that 1/16 of inch thick.  In many cases that will not pass within 5,000KM’s of driving.  If a shock absorber has some minor seepage it will pass, within 3 months of our road conditions and it will most likely fail.  The list goes onto other areas so the point being made here is simply that what was a pass last week, may not pass today.

The biggest issue is that the inspection quality varies from inspection station to inspection station and technician to technician.  This means that not all safeties that are a pass, are a pass.

Sometimes this happens just because the technician doing the inspection may not be familiar with some aspects of the car he is inspecting and an honest error is made.  It also sometimes happens that the inspection was poorly done for one reason or another.

The safeties also do not address the condition of the engine, transmission, air conditioning, overall quality of the vehicle and many more things that could and often do become very expensive to remedy or that affect the price of the car.

The vehicle may also have been in an accident and poorly repaired which may not show up on a safety inspection. Having a trusted and qualified repair shop to provide a complete pre-purchase inspection will give you piece of mind and the assurance that the vehicle is worth what is being asked.

Depending on the type of vehicle, pre-purchase inspections average anywhere from $ 100 to

$200 and should  give you a comprehensive picture of your purchase, or in some cases the car you should not purchase.  Considering the costs of repairs, this is a relatively small price to pay for piece of mind and also allows the shop to help put together a maintenance, repair plan for future service.