U.K. Dealer Sells 'Death Trap' Twice, Faces Jail Time

by Tim Healey

Published: October 2nd, 2023

u k dealer sells death trap twice faces jail time

The United States doesn't have a monopoly on shady car dealerships.

There's a dealer -- 62-year-old Steven Hickman -- in the West Midlands, United Kingdom, who was convicted of selling an "unroadworthy" Subaru Forester (the model year is unclear) to a customer last March. He sold the car through his store, Shelby's of Netherton.

He then apparently sold the same car a month later, despite not having fixed any of the car's problems. He was supposed to refund 3,500 pounds to the first customer.

Hickman has admitted to "engaging in a misleading commercial practice and engaging in a commercial practice which contravened the requirements of professional diligence" according to Car Dealer Magazine.

District Judge Graham Wilkinson was quoted as saying Hickman was ‘willing to sell a death trap’. The judge also said jail was likely -- or as the Brits call it, a "custodial sentence."

When Hickman sold the car a second time, the customer paid 4,300 pounds.

The issues the vehicle had included a rusty suspension that failed while the second customer was driving the car, shortly after buying it.

An investigative agency was called in -- for the second time -- and noticed that paint had been used to attempt to disguise the rust.

Hickman also "admitted failing to act with due care when supplying a product, and permitting another to use a motor vehicle when its use involved a danger of injury," according to Car Dealer.

A local politician said "This is a shocking case. Hickman had already been brought before the courts in relation to this car and was left under no illusions that it was dangerous. He should have scrapped it or repaired it properly, but instead he patched it up and sold it on again, this time for even more, while knowing it was, as the judge described it, a potential death trap. Dudley Trading Standards will not hesitate to investigate complaints where consumers have been misled or where they have been sold a dangerous vehicle."

Hickman will be sentenced in Wolverhampton Crown Court on October 23rd.

[Image: RossHelen/Shutterstock.com]

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Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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2 of 18 comments

Zerofoo on Oct 03, 2023

There's a joke here somewhere about Tim's used car recommendations, Tassos, and death traps.

1 Reply
Analoggrotto on Oct 03, 2023

Too bad they don't sell Kia Telluride, the greatest selling vehicle in it's class over the pond in the UK who burned Washington DC down but that's ok.

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Steve S. Steve was a car guy. In his younger years he owned a couple of European cars that drained his bank account but looked great and were fun to drive while doing it. This was not a problem when he was working at a good paying job at an aerospace company that supplied the likes of Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, but after he was laid off he had to work a number of crummy temp jobs in order to keep paying the rent, and after his high-mileage BMW was totaled in an accident, he took the insurance payout and decided to get something a little less high maintenance. But what to get? A Volkswagen? Maybe a Volvo? No, he knew that the parts for those were just as expensive and they had the same reputation for spending a lot of time in the shop as any other European make. Steve was sick and tired of driving down that road."Just give me four wheels and a seat," said Steve to himself. "I'll buy something cooler later when my work situation improves".His insurance company was about to stop paying for the rental car he was driving, so he had to make a decision in a hurry. He was not really a fan of domestics but he knew that they were generally reliable and were cheap to fix when they did break, so he decided to go to the nearest dealership and throw a dart at something.On the lot was a two year old Pontiac Sunfire. It had 38,000 miles on it and was clean inside and out. It looked reasonably sporty, and Steve knew that GM had been producing the J-car for so long that they pretty much worked the bugs out of it. After taking a test drive and deciding that the Ecotec engine made adequate power he made a deal. The insurance check paid for about half of it, and he financed the rest at a decent rate which he paid off within a year.Steve's luck took a turn for the better when he was offered a job working for the federal government. It had been months since he went on the government jobs website and threw darts at job listings, so he was surprised at the offer. It was far from his dream job, and it didn't pay a lot, but it was stable and had good benefits. It was the "four wheels and a seat" of jobs. "I can do this temporarily while I find a better job", he told himself.But the year 2007 saw the worst economic crash since the Great Depression. Millions of people were losing their jobs, the housing market was in a free fall, people were declaring bankruptcy left and right, and the temporary job began to look more and more permanent. Steve didn't like his job, and he hated his supervisors, but he considered himself lucky that he was working when so many people were not. And the federal government didn't lay people off.So he settled in for the long haul. That meant keeping the Sunfire. He didn't enjoy it, but he didn't hate it either, and it did everything he asked of it without complaint.Eventually he found a way to tolerate his job too, and he built seniority while paying off his debts. There was a certain feeling of comfort and satisfaction of being debt-free, and he even began to build some savings, which was increasingly important for someone now in their forties.Another bit of luck came a few years later when Steve's landlord decided to sell the house Steve was renting, at the bottom of the housing market, and offered it to Steve for what he had in it. Steve's house was small and cramped, and he didn't really like it, but thanks to his savings and good credit he became a homeowner in an up and coming neighborhood.Fourteen years later Steve was still working that temporary job, still living in that cramped little house that he now hated, and still drove the Sunfire because it wouldn't die. For years now he dreamed of making a change, but then the pandemic happened and threw the economy and life in general into chaos. Steve weathered the pandemic, kept his job when millions of people were losing theirs, and sheltered in place in that crummy little house, with Netflix, HBO, and a dozen other streaming services keeping him company, and drove to and from work in the Sunfire because it was four wheels and a seat and that's all he needed for now.Steve's life was secure, but a kind of dullness had set in. He existed, but the fire went out; even when the pandemic ended and life returned to normal Steve's life went on as it had for years; an endless Groundhog Day of work, home, work, home. He never got his real-estate license or finished college and got his bachelor's, never got a better job, never used his passport to do some traveling in Europe. He lost interest in cars. "To think how much money I wasted on hot cars when I was younger", he said to himself. He never married and lost interest in dating. "No woman would want me anyway. I've gotten so dull and uninteresting that I even bore myself".Eventually the Sunfire began to give trouble. With 200,000 miles on the clock it was leaking oil, developing electrical gremlins, and wallow around on blown-out shocks. Steve wasn't hurting for money and thought about treating himself to a new car. "A BMW 3-series, maybe. Or maybe an Alfa Romeo Giulia!" He began to peruse the listings on Autotrader. "Maybe this is just what I need to pull out of this funk. Put a little fun back in my life. Yeah, and maybe go back to the gym, and who knows, start dating again and do some traveling while I'm still young enough to enjoy it!"Then his father passed away and left him a low-mileage Ford. Steve didn't like it or hate it, but it was four wheels and a seat, and that's all he needed right now."Is it too late to have a mid-life crisis?" Steve thought to himself. For what he needed more than that stable job, that house with an enviably small mortgage payment, and that reliable car was a good kick in the hindquarters. "What the hell am I afraid of? I should be afraid that things will never change!"But the depression was like a drug, a numbness that they call "dysthymia"; where you're neither here or there, alive or dead, happy or sad. It was a persistent overcast, a low ceiling that kept him grounded. The Sunfire sat in his driveway getting buried by the needles from his neighbor's overhanging pine trees which were planted right on the property line. "Those f---ing pine trees! That's another thing I hate about this damn house!" Eventually the Sunfire wouldn't start. "I don't blame you", he said to the car as he trudged past it to drive the Ford to another Groundhog Day at that miserable job.
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