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THE PRACTICE OF ‘clocking’ a car is soon to be banned in Ireland, if an amendment to the Road Traffic (No 2) Bill 2013 is accepted.
Fine Gael TD for Kildare North, Anthony Lawlor, has said that he is very pleased that his proposal to make it an offence to clock a car is being adopted by the Minister for Transport, Leo Varadkar TD, through an amendment to the bill.
The amendment to the bill, which is due to be tabled this week in the Dáil, will make it an offence to interfere with the odometer of a vehicle.
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Lawlor initially introduced this through a Private Members Bill in December 2012. He said that the need to deal with the practice of clocking cars was initially brought to his attention by Cartell.ie, a Kildare based company which provides vehicle history to consumers and dealers.
He said that the company “made me aware of the dangers of clocked cars, as they give a false sense of security to motorists in terms of the quality of their vehicle and hoodwink consumers into buying altered goods”.
The amendment being introduced at Report Stage by the Minister will make it an offence for someone to interfere with the odometer, or procure someone to do so, and if found guilty will face a fine of up to €5,000 or up to three months in jail. This is a practical change to the law which will make our roads safer and ensure quality goods are being sold in all motor dealerships.
Minister Varadkar noted in November of last year that there was a draft EU Regulation on periodic roadworthiness tests for vehicles being discussed by both the Council and the Parliament at the time.
“The present text provides that each Member State will take the necessary measures to ensure that manipulating an odometer will be punishable by effective and proportionate penalties,” he said.
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No it is not but it is an offence to sell a vehicle knowing that mileage has been tampered with or to imply that mileage shown is genuine when seller knows it is not.
No. Not illegal. You can turn the millage back in your own car or indeed anyone’s car if they ask you to and it’s not breaking the law.
However, if you then sell the car without informing the new owner what the correct odometer reading should be, and you perhaps then try to pass it off as a lower millage car, that’s illegal.
So the act of interferring with it at the moment is not illegal.
So, I clock my car, ‘sell it’ to a friend. Friend sells the car. Friend doesn’t know car is clocked.
Quite a hard statement to prove that the mileage has been tampered with, let alone that it was done by the one who sold you the car in the first place and not by the any of the previous owners.
It’s actually just Motor Tax assessed on the basis of “Private Car CO2″ or “Private Car Standard” and to be fair a well looked after and regularly serviced car will give off less fumes too.
It’s actually Motor Tax…..pre ’08 (July?) based on engine size, and on emissions since…saying newer cars give off less emissions isn’t factual. Identical ’07 and ’09 cars give off the same emissions but could have €300/€400 in the difference for Motor Tax.
If newer cars give off lower emissions them why is it cheaper to tax a commercial than say a passenger of the same year? Example 2007 commercial lwb land cruiser 3L €333. 2007 passenger LWB land cruiser 3L approx €1300!
Motor Tax: 2010 Toyota Prius €190 for the year.
Pre July 2008 ToyotaPrius €480 for the year.
Not sure about other makes.
My 2003 Renault Clio cost €450 per year.
Commercial vehicles are always going to be cheaper because they are for that purpose! You don’t need a landcruiser for dropping the kids to school or doing the weekly shop! They are supposed to be for farmers/ trades people etc. People with an actual commercial need for that kind of vehicle.
I was replying to Mitch’s comment regarding tax been cheaper on new cars due to emissions, clearly emissions are not the reason as whether commercial or passenger both vehicles of same year can’t be that different on their emission output. In my experience as a commercial vehicle owner, I would do more mileage than a passenger of same make doing the school run.
I’d need to see a great deal of solid evidence before I accept that manufacturing and shipping a new car produces LESS carbon than the difference between its emissions and those generated by running an older car for a few more years.
This is a stimulus measure for the motor industry, nothing more. That’s fine in its own way, but at least be honest and admit that its a regressive tax imposed to support one sector of the economy.
It’s cheap tax from janurary 08, but what most people don’t no is that any car that has the low emissions installed from June 07, u can apply for the cheap tax ang get it, spread the word as this is somthing that the government WON’T tell you!
Your selection of the impact of the new taxation system since 2008 is not the full picture. Equally, there are people whose road tax would go up in price under the 2008 pricing, e.g. people with large petrol engines as they give off more CO2 than diesel engines. When they purchased their car they didn’t know the pricing would change so it was considered to be unfair to then increase their road tax using a model they didn’t know existed. It would, however, make sense that anybody buying a used car pre 2008 should avail of the new pricing and this is the category I fell into when I bought my 2007 diesel car. But I’d say then there would be a lot of loop holes if this happened, .e.g a husband could just transfer the car’s ownership to his wife and so it’d look like the car had been sold and then in that way get the tax decrease.
@Mary Kavanagh! True Mary and if you bought the car on June 30 then you would have paid more tax than if you waited one day yet the emissions from the car didn’t change
In answer to the whole 08 car situation. There had to be a line drawn somewhere so the government choose the same year emissions were brought into the equation. An Audi A4 (type 8E) is the model that ran from 2004 – 2008. Type 8K is from 2008 to present. Clearly you could have registered either model in 2008 and you would have got the lower tax although the 8K is releases less CO2.
Unless we stopped selling cars for an entire year to facilitate this law change this is inevitable. Try comparing the Mazda 3 1.6 Diesel (2008 model) with the 2012 model and the tax is clearly different.
2008 = €517
2012 = €200
its not rocket science!
The UK did the correct thing and left older car tax at the low rates.
It rightly incentivised ONLY new car purchasers to purchase low CO2 cars.
This happened because the British citizens objected strongly to penalising those who could not afford new cars. UK MPs were in fact about to do like the Irish TDs did but they were stopped.
The Irish just lie down and take it.
The car dealer lobby won and forced a new law that artificially promoted the purchase of new cars … in a country that does not manufacture cars …. daft .. there is another word for it!
(You have a right to remain silent but I don’t recommend it …. bring your brains to the polling station when you VOTE)
———————————— http://www.cartaxpetition.net
It’s on the NCT cert alright but if you look up a car on the likes of cartel, it only gives you dates of NCT and not mileage. My old car was on Donedeal a few weeks ago with 88,000 miles on it, I sold it back in 2011 with 105,000. You may pay more at a dealer but you have some comeback as you can ask them to record odometer reading on sale slip as been genuine, if they refuse, well you’re then a fool to buy the car.
I’m into motorbikes and there’s no test on them but I’ve seen friends buying bikes with X amount of miles on them and then looking at them you would know straight away they where clocked . It’s madness.
The technical terms are odometer repair or re calibration…..there is a great story about a lad who opened the dash of a golf gti some years ago to find a post-it stuck to the back of the clocks with the words “oh no, not again” written on it!!
Biggest scam ever is the NCT, one company has the Monopoly and can charge what they like. At least in the UK you can take your car to your local MOT registered garage and get it done for a reasonable fee and they won’t try and screw you over.
Gotta say I disagree here, I find the NCT tells me what needs fixing and no more. Sure, it’s a monopoly, which is a shame, but at least that makes it consistent which in H&S is somewhat needed… MOT was notorious for passing people on a nod and a wink (though much better now).
And NCT were always right. Generally got good advice on what’s going to need work in the not-so-distant future too…
Just had my car nct’d and the only thing wrong was that my dipped headlights were not completely aligned. Spoke to a friend and she had the exact same this week, €55 to test the car then another €28 to retest because they use the machine to retest the lights. Utter scam artists they are.
So you’re one of those drivers that has been driving around blinding other drivers with your incorrectly focused lights yeah? Shame on the NCT for pointing it out.
the Voice Id add you but im not into ladyboys hahahhaa
its a bug in facebook i maled zukerberg about it !!! geddit i ‘male’d zuckerberg hahahahahahahaah
God Im fast . green thumbs if you aggree!!!! hahaha
im guessing fill in an application to the Dept of Transport, and yes i know sounds like a money making scheme, but doesn’t that sound like the right thing to do to make it legal?
Never having done this I am not sure but donor engine I’d imagine or there is something about selling vehicle ‘mileage unknown’. Sorry to be vague on this m
what a load a tosh. ban off road bikes from mountains and coilte forests. and ban 4 wheel drives from offroad areas like the ballyhoura mountans… fine gael are full of crap
NO!!!! after the storms we’ve seen what off roaders cause thru Global warming.
off roaders should feel ashamed what they indirectly caused to lahinch in clare
Yeah, thats’s exactly it. All the Land Cruiser’s and Range Rovers went out a swim in the Atlantic and caused massive waves and storms. Go back to making love to your Prius
never!!! after the storms we had people are going to have to give up there cars..beside 50 years ago no one had cars…people are just going to have to get used to cycling and walking again!
ronan no use giving out to me this is the way its going to be soon…petrol prices are going to be double next year so most people wont be able to drive soon anyway.. i dont care cause im not a peasant so i can afford it
Agree with your argument up to a point Stephen but can I ask you a question, which creates most pollution in an hour; all the vehicles on irish roads or the war machinery being operated by UK or Germany?
So there was no cars in 1964? I think most people would disagree with that statement. Also I for one will never give up my car for some silly environmentalists.
So if clocking is banned what will the Eastern Europeans here do with their clapped out audis and passats. Maybe clean them twice a day instead of once or add some more l.e.d. lights onto the car?? Would be devastating for them if clocking was banned but probably worse if lidl stopped selling cheap car maintenance tat.
Stephen maybe you should spend more time researching and less time voicing “your do called facts” Unlike many other countries around the world, Ireland are making a decent effort to reduce their carbon footprint. If you are so interested in reducing global warning through social media maybe you should focus your attention on countries like China that are not signing up to Kyoto Protocol because they do not want to hamper the growth of their industry.
Clocking is illegal end of. What sort of people are writing these articles ffs. Advice to anyone reading this. Delete the journal app . Cant fcuking believe im reading this article. Journal.ie= job for the boys. Good bye journal.i DELETED.
I thought that was covered under the Trades Descriptions Act at the very least. Surely it’s fraud to pass off a car with high mileage as having lower mileage?!
I’ve a question. Car had full battery drain over Xmas. Digital odometer kept it’s reading when prob was fixed. Why couldn’t the rest of the digital settings be kept too I wondered!? How’s that possible when 0 power the digital odometer reading stays put???!
A lot of cars since 2009 have more than 4 Ecu’s and mileage is stored in each of them. Not in just display and body module/Ecu but in areas like brake, airbag, cabin control modules. Thats how some people have been caught out. BMW since 2010 have aTransponder that records on keys as well.
A good tactic which might sound to simple but it works because if someone is lying and you ask the right question they will tell the truth.
Went to see a car for sale in Dundalk, the owner lives in Dundalk, 3 years old, 65000 Km in the odometer, relatively low mileage.
Asked the owner about usage and he says ” I use it to drive to work, go to the shops and the odd trips”
Asked the owner where does he works and he said “in Dublin”
Most of the English cars on the market here is clocked. Irish people should buy genuine used irish cars where they can contact the previous owner for the history. And keep jobs on the go. It is terrible to see the amount off car dealerships closed down in the country. But we have only ourselves to blame. It would only happen I guarantee the British government would not stand up and let that amount of imported used cars into there country.
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