Today we discuss one of the biggest purchases you can make, explaining how to make sure you find a car that's right for you.

We're joined by car expert and podcaster Sam Moores to give you some tips and tricks to help you when it comes to buying and selling, plus we pull back the curtain of how we test cars here at Which? and reveal the manufacturing claims you just need to take with a pinch of salt.

Read our advice on how to buy the best car & become a Which? member to receive our 2024 car guide.

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Unknown Speaker 0:02

Hello and welcome. I'm Harry kind.

Unknown Speaker 0:04

I'm Grace Forell

Speaker 1 0:05

and this is Get Answers for living your best consumer life.

Unknown Speaker 0:08

When life gives you questions

Speaker 1 0:11

Speaker 2 0:58

Speaker 1 1:28

As I had my learner car, which was basically a go kart had absolutely nothing, it didn't even have windows open in the back. It did, however, have a nice mould growing underneath the main seat, I'm not sure if that was the basic spec or you had to upgrade for that. So this week, we are going to be separating those useless unused features from the ones that really matter when you're buying your next vehicle. Later, we'll be pulling back the curtain and how we test cars here at which, and we will reveal which manufacturing claims you just need to take with a pinch of salt.

Speaker 2 1:59

And this is excellent timing because which members should have received their car guide in the last week or so. But actually, if you've just joined as a member, and you missed it, or if you join us in the next few months, you will be sent a copy, just make sure you join before June. But we'll have more on this offer in the show notes. First, though,

Speaker 1 2:16

let's welcome our guests for today's show. Is the podcast at YouTuber an all round car fanatic Sam Moores, welcome, Sam. Hello, thank you so much for joining us. Can you give us a bit of a background of what you do and how you've gotten into cars.

Speaker 3 2:30

So I studied engineering at university was sort of in cars before that a little bit, but not not tons. Just kind of like I could say that was a Lamborghini. I couldn't tell you the model, sort of during this time, I'd started taking photos, always had an interest in photography. And then a friend of mine started filming cars and going car events. And he was like, why don't you come along, take some photos. I started taking some photos sort of carried on and got into that. So I'm a photographer, I have since started making some videos every now and then. And then along the way, probably four years ago, it's always a lot longer than you think it is. So it's probably six, I decided to start a podcast, I realized that I had a reasonable number of contacts in the sort of automotive space. But mainly it was just spending a lot of time talking to my friends who were sort of in the industry as such about cars. So I figured it was one of my favorite mediums for listening to stuff. So I would start interviewing my mates, after about five episodes realized I had no more mates and had to start getting in touch with random people. And then our 200 episodes in all long form interviews about people in my sort of car space doing interesting things.

Speaker 1 3:37

I mean, you probably drive more cars in a month than the average person does in a whole lifetime. So you know, when you're getting into new cars, you're seeing different ones all the time, adjusting the seats, making sure the air concept view, what are your pet peeves when you're kind of experiencing a new car, what does annoy you about the cars that you do test sometimes,

Speaker 3 3:58

I think it depends on sort of new cars versus older cars, some stuff that's been quite annoying recently, a good example. You get in a car you're not driven before. And the things you want to do is adjust to see and sort of get set up and whatever and most cars now you can plug your phone in. And if you've on Apple, it'll say turn on CarPlay. And it's kind of done most of the stuff you want to do set the temperature. But I was in a new Range Rover. There's no sort of buttons really there. I think there was something that looks like a seat but you can't move much. That's like two buttons or something. So you press a button. That then on the central screen brings up a submenu with a seat on it, which has like 18 slider options. You're moving at this point in time. Probably shouldn't be. But normally you just reach down the side of your seat, move it a little bit and you don't need to look at it. You start adjusting your seat have one of the 14 million options because it's got all the kit and then after about two seconds, that submenu just retracts just disappears and you have just got the whole process again, you have to press the button, and then it pops out again. And then you start. So sub menus on screens, that is unbelievably annoying, so

Speaker 1 5:09

much more complicated, then presumably some of the classic cars you test, which is just one large knob that you twist or a lever. Yeah,

Speaker 3 5:17

I like having the technology and the different changes and stuff. But things like that I think manufacturing have gone past the point of helpful. And we now need to come back a little bit and have maybe some buttons on the side of seats, I'm sure it's there's benefits to making it easier, like from a manufacturing and cheap sort of point of view of having it all through one display. But there are certain things you want to be able to do without looking at them. I don't know, turn on the music or whatever. It's normally on the steering wheel, but a dial rather than some sort of tap haptic feedback buttons that you're driving along the road, and you're juggling around your hands, and always in the same place. There's plenty of stuff like that. Do

Speaker 1 5:59

you have any, I suppose advice on that on what are your go to like tests that you'll do on those month long experiences that mean that you can kind of make a realization in 510 minutes,

Speaker 3 6:10

I think it's really tricky. I don't have like a set process, I just kind of get in and use the car. Often I'll get a car for like two hours. So I'm not really like deep diving into stuff. Sometimes I have a car for a week. Sometimes it's a car I've owned, or whatever. So you haven't for longer. So I'm not doing like a thorough test. But if I'm buying a car, and I'm quite a techy person, I like researching stuff and whatever, I will watch all the reviews on that car. Like whether they're people talking about how good it is to drive, or whether it's something that you guys talk about a little bit about, like all of the testing of the amounts of space. And yeah, the idea that I will look at all of that stuff. And most of the things that might be annoying, would get flagged by those sorts of things, which

Speaker 1 6:59

presumably that works when your car actually is the spec that it's supposed to be. Is that right?

Speaker 3 7:05

Speaker 1 8:09

it's like we've got a whole generation of pandemic cars where people have got called bottoms

Speaker 3 8:14

100%, or like, slightly smaller screens and all this sort of stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 1 8:18

And that stuff that it's very difficult. You've got to ask, I suppose all the questions when you're buying a car, I mean, something smoother, more obvious, which is that the car is like almost the size of a house. Like you test classic cars, you look at modern cars. Obviously, they're getting bigger. We've actually done some research that finds that more and more cars now are just unpalatable in like the average UK parking spaces, is that something that you've kind of come across that there are some fat bottom cars out there,

Speaker 3 8:48

cars are definitely bigger, it's difficult to say whether it's sort of manufacturer marketing, LED or consumer led, I think each one tries to argue that it's the other one that everyone wants an SUV, I think from a manufacturing point, they can sell them for more and they don't cost much more to make so they make more profit, and they are taller. But generally people who want to be a bigger cars.

Speaker 2 9:08

I mean, I've been put off getting a bigger car, I've got a Kia narrow, so it's not a small car. But we've been looking at going a little bit bigger. And it is the parking that puts me off. But I love the I'm gonna I probably don't know the right name of this feature. But the rear view camera that lets you see, you know, when you're relaxing. I mean, it feels like cars are getting bigger, but that technology is getting more advanced. So the parking is it's easier in that respect, even though the cars are bigger, but I don't think I'd want to go much bigger than where I'm at now. Yeah,

Speaker 3 9:36

I think it's one of those things you get used to whatever you're driving, so if you've never driven a huge car, once you do drive a huge car, you get used to it, but one feature that is on some modern cars that I personally don't like is electronic side mirrors. So little screens instead of side mirrors. So they got cameras instead.

Are you looking at those kinds of the actual really, really useful developments that there have been some of that from regulation, some of that's just through innovation, there'll be listeners, they've not bought a new car in maybe 20 years, a whole lot moved on, what should they definitely be thinking, this should be potentially top of my list of things to include. That

is tricky. Some of these are more expensive options. So I wouldn't say you've got to have it. That just can't be nice to have sometimes. One of my favorite ones is adaptive cruise control. That is on a lot of new cars now. And what does that do? So cruise control, you just turn it on, and it holds your accelerator at the speed that you're doing. So you set it at 70. And it will, you will just keep moving 70. The problem with that in let's say the UK is the current front slows down. And if you're not paying too much attention, you would smash straight into them. Adaptive Cruise Control has some cameras and sensors, depending on the car depends on the set of sensors and stuff they have. But if the car in front slows down, your car slows down, what I found about using that system, is you have a few different options for the distance to the car in front, and you probably set it at a sensible distance, and then you kind of leave it you haven't really changed that one. And what you'll find is you're driving down the motorway, and you're like, Oh, I'm leaving a nice amount of space to the car in front. Whereas if you don't have that system, I would be surprised if anyone leaves that amount of space, which would be considered a sensible amount of space. But you see, most people drive another motorway on each other's bumpers at like 80 miles an hour, which if someone tries to stop is going to be a problem. That's one of my favorite ones. CarPlay I've got an Apple phone, and the ability to just plug my phone in. And I could have preset my Google music comes up often cars have it wireless now, that is a great feature easily retrofittable to an older car these days. No,

how would you retrofit that to an older car,

you'd have to look up the specific car and model etc. But you can basically buy a unit that replaces the standard sort of screen in your car with a very similar looking one, except it has CarPlay excetera, Bluetooth and, and whatnot. And you can do that in a lot of cars. It's a real meaningful upgrade. And I'd say that the final feature is an Eevee or hybrid only feature. It's one of my favorite things about EVs is the ability to preheat your car before you get in it. Now, there might be some Americans listening who go yeah, my whatever truck has been able to do this for ages. And in America, you can buy cars where you just go beep beep on your remote, the engine starts across the street, and the aircon and whatnot starts running. But with an Eevee, you can set it you can do it from your phone, all this sorts of stuff. So in a winter morning, a classic photo could be of an ice car, so a car with a engine in it, and an Eevee next to each other in the morning, maybe your neighbor and you and the Eevee is like D frosted warm, ready to get in when you get it in the morning, whereas the other guys likes scraping the the ice off the windscreen. And that is unless you have a hybrid powertrain. And I think it probably has to be a plug in hybrid but a hybrid powertrain or an Eevee. You can't do that. But it's an amazing feature. Just

quickly, Sam, what are your thoughts on EVs? Do you own one? Do you want to own one soon? Do you think we're ready for them?

I think there's lots of topics on EVs from pure ownership experience. For me at the moment, we use one for short journeys around town and stuff like that. And yeah, I have this car that has a sort of theoretical long range of like 150 miles. And as I drove over 30 miles an hour down the motorway, you might get in trouble. And that works great for us. And we have to do longer trips. And as long as it's within that range. In that car, I don't worry about it at all, I wouldn't want to be charging that particular car out in the world all the time just from my life, I can't be bothered, but it's not hassle charging electric cars, I would look at the range. And don't take what the manufacturer says the Wi it's not even what the manufacturer says the manufacturer is not lying to you. It's a test that an outside body has put the car through. And it's just not realistic for day to day driving. So the US have a different test. But that is actually much more representative of what you would actually get. So if I looked at my car, it would probably say 150 miles, rather than 250 on that one. And

actually that's what we do here at which is that we do a real life test on evey range so that you know how far you're going to be able to go in a real life conditions. But we're going to find out more about our testing regime after the break.

Welcome back to get answers where Today we're chatting cars, we've been talking about some of the modern features that you might not know which can be a help or a hindrance. But here at which we like to test the real every day essentials, how much boot space, how far can your car drive, and grace has been talking to one of our testing experts to find out More.

Yes. So for today's episode, I've been chatting to Dino Bharati, he's one of our cars experts here at which and he knows pretty much all there is to know about the weird and wonderful tests we put cars through. Here's what happened when we spoke earlier. So Dino, it's that time of the year where which publishes the car guide, big deal for us, isn't it? What actually, is it? And how do we put it together? Because you're quite a key part of the team. Yeah, so

the car guide has two roles, basically. So we use it to summarize the best. And in some cases, the worst models that have been released or that we've had scores for over the last 12 months. So in that respect, it acts as a buyer's guide, showing readers what cars are available, both new and us that we either recommend, don't recommend or think are worth talking about. And then the other aspect of the guide is is a showcase for the results of our reliability survey, which takes place every year. And it's the largest reliability survey of cars, we think in the UK.

So apart from reliability, what kind of things are you looking at them when when you're kind of assessing each model that you include?

So we take a number of different factors into consideration that can vary from things like safety, because we found in urine cap, we helped to found the organization back in 1996. Just

for anyone who's listening who isn't familiar, Euro end cap, can you explain what that is?

Urine cap is a European organization that was founded in 1996. And it basically it crashed tests, new cars, it can be everything up to 7080 a year, depending on what the manufacturer is want to submit for testing. And basically, every car that gets tested has a star rating. So five stars is very good, excellent. Most cars nowadays do score five stars, that then goes down to 4321. And in very rare cases, zero staff. What we do is basically any car that scores three stars or less in the urine cap tests is an automatic don't buy from us, whether it's a new car or a used car. Is

it right that our labs carry out over 200 tests on each car?

Yeah, our lab does carry out a lot of tests on each car. I mean, they can have each vehicle for two weeks. That's how long it can take them to carry out tests on each car, basically,

can you give us an example of some of the tests that they do?

So our lab has a collection of foam breaks that it uses to test usable boot space? It does this by placing the bricks in the boot of the car, and then measuring how many there are because the bricks are due are usually different sizes, they can then look at those bricks and work out how much usable space there is, the amount of usable space there is very rarely tallies with what the manufacturer claims the car has for actual booth space.

So do you find that a lot then where a car manufacturer will make a claim but then when we actually go to test it, we find that that's not actually the case. Yeah,

I mean, so anything from mpg Eevee range boot space, it's very unusual that our tests will show that a manufacturer claim is accurate. Although in some cases, our tests actually show that say evey range can actually be better than a manufacturer claims, which is very unusual, but it's very interesting.

Are there any other unusual tests that help us get our results?

Yeah, so our lab also has a test track facility that they use for various performance benchmarking tests, but they also use it to perform a hazard avoidance test. So they will set up basically a situation where you have to swerve out of the line at very short notice, and then swerve back into the lane. If you've got to avoid, say, a stalled car, or another type of hazard. And they'll drive the car at about 56 miles an hour into that scenario, and then they'll try to steer the car out of the line into the next line as quickly as possible to avoid the hazard.

Right? And what about things like comfort? How do you test that?

So we have a dummy that we use to measure the amount of height and legroom that's available for passengers in the front and the back of the car. Our engineers will put this dummy into the car set it up so it's comfortable for passengers in the front and the back and then they will measure how much space there is available for people to sit in the car.

Okay, that is interesting.

And I can actually confirm that I am not that dummy that they talked about that they

you know that, that dummy when when I was speaking to him about it. I was envisioning this you know, like when you see car crashes when they've like set up a car crash and there's like an awful dummy being thrown around. I thought it was gonna be like that kind of dummy, but it isn't. It's like just a series of, I don't know levers and things to be different sizes of person.

And actually, all of that out. And all of the results from our testing are in our brand new car Guide, which is out now, it's got reviews of hundreds of cars and includes our favorite cars of 2024, which covers everything from the best family car, the best AV hybrids and more. To get the full details on that you need to be able to remember, but we asked nicely, and the car team said, we can give away a couple of interesting nuggets. For example, if reliability is your thing, then Japanese manufacturers continue to score highly. While the Renault Zoe, one of the most popular electric vehicles continues to perform poorly in our rankings, because it received a zero star crash test score from the European car testing people really quite shocking. If you want the full details on that, on how to sign up, I'll put a link in the description for today's episode. So Sam, you've listened to that. What did you make of what you've heard, it's kind of, I suppose, a less sexy way of testing cars, maybe than you would with a Lamborghini.

I think that sort of testing, which you guys do. And those people that do is is really important. I think being able to look up and compare between cars, and all done scientifically makes a huge difference. And like I get friends asking me sometimes less than I'd hope often they just tell me what they've bought, and I've gone. Why have you done that? But doing all these things, they might go, Okay, I've bought, for example grades, you're saying, Oh, we're looking for a slightly bigger car. Now, are you looking for a bigger car, because you want a bigger car, or do you want more space, there might be a manufacturer that makes a car that's the same size that might have not even necessarily more interior space, it just might be much more usable, one that we've come across with our cars, if you've got a big kind of holiday luggage bag, some cars, you can put that bag in and on sort of pointing away from you straight in the boot. And therefore you might be able to get I don't know for side by side, whereas some it's not quite deep enough, or the seat reclined back a little bit. And some cars let you move the backrest on the seat, which could change this problem. And it means that you can just about fit it in. Whereas if you have to put them sideways, the Tetris doesn't work. And you might only get three and rather than four, really kind of Nishi nerdy type stuff. No, we'd love it, trying to look at manufacturers litre rich on their websites, this is when it starts getting dirty. There is no set standard for measuring boots base. So when manufacturers say the leverage of their boot, in theory, they're meant to do up to, or a lot of manufacturers do up to where that cover is, whatever it's called the past or shelf, so that you can put the luggage in the car and see over the top and use the car as per normal. When you're looking. I'm tempted to do this, because I've had a small kid in the last couple of years and our cars and slightly got bigger and bigger and bigger as time has gone on is like get your car at home, put in a bunch of big bags and go this fits in our car at home. This is a typical weekend, and then just take those bearings with you to the dealership, can I put them in that car,

that's a good idea.

See if it fits. If it fits, and you go, I've got loads more space, or actually kind of the same, then you've got a much better idea of that, say the load capacity of the car. Speaking

of car dealerships, you must have come across a fair few salespeople in your time. Sam, do you have any tips here on how to kind of wade through some of their sales patter and get a good deal,

I would always say, do all your research. And if you're after something super rare, then it sort of narrowed it down. Often anyway, you there's only a few places you can go to. So then picking someone you trust, it's helpful. If it's a secondhand car, you can get inspections. If you're buying for a main OEM dealer, they generally you get a warranty. So that's quite nice that sort of alleviate some of that you can go and get an outside, like a non manufacturer warranty, which I did a podcast with someone about this topic recently. And they are the same product. I think a lot of people go, Okay, I've gone to Porsche, and they give me a two year warranty. Okay, I can go to this other company. And they'll give me a two year warranty. And lots of people would assume that the one from Porsche or whoever Audi, BMW lalala is kind of worth more than this second other company. The reality is that all off the shelf products sold by the same people rebrand it just like a white label product. So the warranty has probably come from a company like this other one you're looking at, but Porsche or whoever have put their name on it, and they're selling it. It's just part of it. So you can get a warranty on pretty much any car. It will just work will cost. They've got to think you're going to walk away. If they don't think you're going to walk away. Then what are you going to get? You can look on websites like auto trader you can see how long a car has been forced sale for, that's quite interesting. If the dealer has had it for a long time, maybe if it's getting towards the end of the month, or if the new plates are about to come out, if it's a sort of new cup type car, they might be wanting to try and get rid of, or hit targets. On the 30th of January, for example, you're in a much better position, if they've been sitting on a car for four months. And you know, they kind of need to shift it, then you've got a lot of power there. Whereas if the car has only been in the dealership for an hour, and they've had five people call about it, then

you might be the person who gets it over the they're kind of like coarsely quota, and they win the bottle of champagne in the in the dealership?

And what about things like looking in other parts of the country for a car because car cars don't always cost the same price in all parts of the country, right?

No, they don't. So for example, if you try to go sort of super extreme, if you are selling a convertible, and you are in, I don't know, Alaska, in the winter, there's a lot less people that want to buy that car. If you go to the south of France in the summer, you'd say, oh, maybe there's a lot more people that want to convertible down here. So there are shifts, and it's always worth it. It's very easy to do now, there's places where demand is high. Places where demand is low. Some cars are more popular in certain locations. Maybe if you lived in the desert, there's more off roaders and Toyotas and stuff like that trucks and things. If you live in central London, there might be probably loads of massive cars, because everyone needs off road cars in London. But there is there is fluctuations, but the internet has made it very easy to see what's for sale. And I think that's that's worked both ways, I don't think you're gonna get necessarily crazy deals. But you can find stuff easily. And if you're willing to travel, the dealer is also aware that if you've traveled there, they know you don't want to go back without a car.

You are a captive audience. I've

got one final point, I didn't mention just a couple of little ones on buying cars. So condition of the car, look at the car, if you can take someone else along with you, if you've got a friend that sort of, you know that person that spots a spot does from a mile away or like a picture that's not hanging straight if you've not got a real like, you know, car enthusiasts stick person take take that person and just have a look around the car, see if the doors are open and closed properly, if the panel gaps, so they're sort of gaps in between all the bodywork if they all look kind of similar, does anything look different? And then service history. So has it got any of people kept the documents, the manufacturer, when they make them, they go, okay, the oil needs to be changed after 5000 miles, 20,000 miles, whatever. If it's not, what you're doing is you're increasing the wear on the car, these cars are built, things need to be changed brakes, etc, etc, etc. And if you've got receipts for all of that stuff, then one it says, What's the person like who's had this car before, if they've got a folder with the name of the car on it, and like a picture on the front, and they've got every single document ever? And photos of I don't know, holidays or whatever, in this set of documents, they care about that car, if there's nothing and there's one key. And you're like, where's the other key that I don't know, you know, all that sort of stuff. It tells you a little bit about the cars life other than the pure numbers.

Finally, if you can settle a debate which has been going on in the in our social media groups, which is our car headlights getting brighter, and if they are as a driver, do you think that's a good thing or are you do prefer the nice dim orange glow of a classic car,

it's 100% a good thing. Anyone drive a classic car, in the winter, in the dark in the rain, you want to see the objects before you hit them. Like I did a great experience taking an old 911 to Sweden in the winter, then we've mounted some extra lights on it. And even then they were absolutely awful. Unbelievable. But seeing is a good thing, seeing

but then also being blinded. It's a fine line.

The technology is getting the sort of the top end which will filter down to everything. We have these things called matrix lights now, so their lasers and whatnot. But as the car is coming towards you, the lights literally part around the car. It's it's really tricky. So unlike high end, I don't know German stuff and whatnot. But literally your light is a normal beam. And then as the car comes towards you a dark block covers the car, so they don't get dazzled. And you can see to the left to the right of them above etc. is really trick.

Sam, thank you so much for joining today. Just a huge trove of knowledge. Obviously there's a whole lot more where that came from. Where can people find you on your socials and listen to your podcast as well? Yeah,

Um, my name is Sam Moore's. I have a podcast called car chat. It's on all podcast platforms. You can also find me on YouTube, Instagram, etc. Bla bla bla bla.

Thank you, Sam,

thank you so much really been fantastic and big. Thank you for joining us.

Thanks very much.

We hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you'd like to get in touch with us and have your message read out on our next episode, then we're on email at podcast at which topcoat UK and at which UK on socials. And that's the same place to send your feedback on how you're enjoying our episodes here on get answers. As we

mentioned earlier, it would be great if you would help us out and leave a rating and a review wherever you're

listening. So great. What are we up to next time?

Well, it's an important one, so make sure you don't miss it. We are pressing the fast forward button and discussing the future of scams helping you stay one step ahead of the fraudsters. And we'll be joined by one of the brilliant team behind BBC scam interceptors, which is a fantastic program, so don't miss it.

And remember, if you want more great stuff to listen to before then check out the witch money pod for your personal finances. And we've got the best story from which magazine narrated for you over on which shorts. Today's Get Answers was presented by me, Harry Kind, alongside Grace Forell produced and recorded by Rob Lilley Jones, and edited by Eric Bria, and thanks again to our wonderful guests which expert Dino Burrati, and the brilliant Sam Moores. We'll see you next time. Bye bye bye