For a year, I could only drive it to the garage: another complaint about Christchurch car dealer

Friday, 31 January 2025

Jamie Ferrari was in the news last year after finally paying father-of-triplets Nick Beard after a court ordered him to refund a car that kept breaking down. That sounded familiar to another customer - but he’s had no luck with his dream car, writes Steve Kilgallon

Che McLennan has owned his $20,000 second-hand Subaru Impreza WRX for almost two years. But until recently, he says that only once has he driven it when the destination hasn’t been a garage for more repairs. And that time, it broke down.

McLennan, a long-time WRX enthusiast, reckons Christchurch car dealer Jamie Ferrari has sold him a lemon - a car he cannot “in good conscience” re-sell.

McLennan had accepted failure in his dispute with Ferrari, of Chevron Quality Cars, until he read Stuff’s story last November about father-of-triplets Nick Beard’s battles with the dealer.

Beard won a court judgment that Ferrari had to repay him $23,500 for a car which repeatedly broke down. He had to serve a statutory demand for payment after Ferrari said his company had shut down, and only repaid the money after Stuff made inquiries.

McLennan has owned several WRXs, and he thought the white 1996 model he spotted on TradeMe in April 2023 would be a good investment that would appreciate over time.

The listing described the car as an “outstanding example of the ever popular GC8 WRX Sti” which would be “freshly serviced” and have a new WOF.

He says he was aware of the issues of buying an older performance car, but took time to find one considered in excellent condition, and was happy to pay above the market rate in return for the confidence that it would run well and that buying from a dealer would give. “How wrong I was!”

But Ferrari says there are “two sides to every story” and the car is a 29-year-old classic performance vehicle “so please bear that in mind”. He says McLennan has never asked for a refund, he has fixed every fault he’s been told of, and the car has been driven 6000km since he sold it. He thinks the dispute is resolved.

Ferrari says the car was originally listed at $34,999 but sold on a $1 reserve auction as Chevron was changing their “stock profile” to late-model European cars. McLennan paid $20,601 for the car - but says when he went to collect it, the ‘check engine’ light came on immediately. He says Ferrari advised him to drive it home, 40km away. The car threatened to stall all the way. It then wouldn’t restart and McLennan claims Ferrari agreed to go halves on a new battery, but didn’t pay up.

McLennan says that after that, the car kept surging when he drove it. Three times he took it to a Rangiora garage for repairs, but each time he had the same issue on his drive home. He says Ferrari then had him go to a different garage where he experienced the same issue.

McLennan says in September 2023 he decided to drive the car properly for the first time. It broke down, and he waited four hours for a tow truck which delivered him and the car to Rangiora at 11pm and left him with a four-hour, 21km walk home because there are no taxi services to his home in the North Canterbury village of Leithfield.

McLennan says that he took it to two different garages and saw various mechanics and was told it was a fuel filter, a sensor, a leaking radiator and a blown head gasket which was the cause of the WRX’s trouble.

But McLennan says the difficulty of delivering the car for repair and then getting it home again meant it sat on his driveway for weeks at a time, and so from October 2023 to March 2024 it sat unused. He took it back to one garage in March which billed him $1400 for repairs. He tried to pass the bill to Ferrari, who said the repairs were unauthorised and out of warranty and he would not pay, describing one issue raised by a garage as a “them problem not an us problem”. McLennan says if Ferrari’s customer service had been better he would have kept him better informed.

McLennan says those repairs appeared to fix the original fault - 364 days after he collected the car, but it has since broken down again with two different issues. He says he’s driven the car a couple of times since but doesn’t trust it for longer journeys.

Up to December, when Stuff first spoke to McLennan, he had only driven the car 2000km because of its many issues. He says he’s since then added another 3000km. That’s about 1000km less than Ferrari claims.

In his original written complaint to Ferrari, McLennan said the car had been sold to him “with a fault that has still not been resolved”. “In nearly a year of ownership, I have not driven it a single time without there being an issue and have only attempted to drive it once (ended up on a tow truck) for any reason other than driving to a mechanic.”

But Ferrari wasn’t swayed. In a March 2024 text message, he told McLennan that the car was“well outside of any warranty now and we will not be assisting with any repairs”.

An email provided a fuller explanation. Ferrari said he’d told McLennan before purchase that “regardless of price it is a 20 plus year old performance vehicle and unplanned repairs can occur”: “You can’t simply expect me to repair your vehicle every time you have a new fault, like you have thus far. I have stood by this car for you further than I actually was legally required to knowing it has had different faults.”

Ferrari said he was “more than confident to have this go to the MVDT [Motor Vehicles Disputes Tribunal] as it's very black and white for us”.

In his email to Ferrari, McLennan said it was unfair for Ferrari to say that he had taken too long to complain, when the issue at time of purchase remained unresolved for almost a year. “As your customer, can you appreciate the stress this situation has caused me? I spent over 20k with you and not once have I been able to drive the vehicle I bought in good faith from you without having an issue. I have spent much time taking the car to and from mechanics at your request to only have the issue still exist each time. How is this fair mate? … To wipe your hands of it when it has not been fixed is simply wrong and unfair”.

For a while, McLennan says he ignored the issue because he had just bought a North Canterbury pub, the Old Leithfield Hotel, and was working hard on his business.

He thought complaining to the MVDT would be too hard, and worried the tribunal would say he’d taken too long to raise a complaint. But, he says, “the only reason it’s taken so long is because I’ve tried to let him fix that, and do the right thing”.

He also feels Ferrari has dragged the process out.“He’s never apologised once for the issues I’ve gone through,” says McLennan, “and all he’s ever said is ‘this is your problem’.”

He reckons he’s “about $28,000 in the hole” on the car, including mechanic bills, and says Ferrari told him he’s spent even more of his own money on repair bills.

McLennan’s worry is the car may have been flood-damaged, due to high rust marks on the body, and also that any potential purchasers will see on the carsearch website CarJam that it has not done much recent mileage and surmise it has needed extensive repairs.

But Ferrari has a different version of events.

He stands by the TradeMe advert, saying the WRX was an “absolutely outstanding example and even more so for being close to a 30 years old vehicle with 164,000 kms. Vehicle was freshly imported, complied and serviced and was a great auction grade from Japan – Client was the first NZ owner and was to be insured well above purchase price”.

He says when the car had its WOF done before handover, his staff were told it had a low battery, and needed to be driven, but ran fine when it was test-driven. He says he agreed to the battery payment solution, but never received an invoice or claim and the only message he got was that the battery had charged and there were no issues.

When the car was in for repairs, he says he loaned McLennan a late-model BMW and gave him “direct access” to their “chosen specialist workshop”. He adds: “We are always transparent with any repairs for our clients and approved all invoicing for work completed”.

He agrees he didn’t pay for the last set of repairs because he was never told about them until after they happened, and McLennan had since agreed to pay for them himself. “The workshop acknowledged they shouldn’t have done the work without authorisation.”

Consumer NZ advocate Maggie Edwards, who advised Nick Beard, from our November story, says the length of time since purchase means McLennan might struggle to claim under the Consumer Guarantees Act, but the delay was “understandable”, and he could use Beard’s District Court decision to mount a case before the MVDT.

She says in McLennan’s favour is the amount he has spent on the car, but against him is the age of the car when he bought it. Meanwhile, until last month, the car sat mainly undriven, says McLennan: “It’s a useless car that I cannot use, or sell in good conscience.”