My cousin is looking to buy an Aston Martin in Switzerland. He went to test drive a Rapide this morning and while inspecting it on a lift this was discovered. Is this bend/dent something to be concerned about?

 

An additional picture

 

if i ran over something on the road and looked under the car and saw that, i'd be taking a good look at the floor board and seat position and be listening for any new noises. if it all checked out, i'd try to put it out of my mind.

if thinking about buying it, and if i wasn't such a nice guy, i'd probably use it to negotiate a lower price.

 

If concerned, have an Aston certified repair center look it over...I recall a few years ago someone on this forum got his Vantage totaled because some guy at a tire shop jacked his car up improperly and bent the frame beyond repair

 

Agreed and yes their was a story on a car getting totaled out with similar damage. On a personal level I wouldn't be opposed to it if it was dirt cheap!

 

The seller should have an explanation of how and when that happened. No way you get a dent like that without knowing it. But it could also be an auction car w/o much documentation. I also would think the Swiss are fairly strict on inspections so somebody has eyeballed this before. I would pass unless it was remarkably cheap AND the integrity is verified and I wasn’t concerned with selling down the road.

 

The story is a garage jacked in the wrong place. One owner car with records. The owner died and car is for sale via dealer.

 

It sounds like the past thread dealing with a similar jacking situation should be carefully reviewed. Some debate regarding drivability vs. collision safety & insurability. As previously noted, an independent opinion would not be a bad idea.

 

Depends on how precious he is about things. In my experience, mild dents/deformations like this are common and don't matter. I'd buy it and drive the hell out of it.

 

Has the car passed the swiss tech inspection (MFK) recently?
Just to make sure the dent is not a reason to fail the MFK (which can be tedious in switzerland).
A letter from an official AM dealer describing the dent as "not structural damaging" would be a good thing to have ...just in case.

 

A question you also might ask is what quality of work is done by a shop that 1. doesn't know how to properly jack up a car, and 2. doesn't care enough to research an issue before just doing whatever they assume to be correct on a $200,000 car. I'd take a hard look at any work that has been done on the car.

 

That would be my main concern as well...

PS I wonder how it will go with my secondary cats removed and the MFK, when time will come.

 

The car sold, so doesn't matter at this point. I showed the picture to the guys at my local AM dealership and they didn't think it was of concern unless it bent the floor pan, which it did not.

Cousin is still on the lookout for another Rapide in CH under 65K CHF. Anyone who may know of something beyond Autoscout24.ch, please let me know.

 

Use comparis, very few times there is something on ricardo, car4you and direcctly on comparis, and comparis scans all of them.
https://www.comparis.ch/carfinder/search

For instance.
https://www.comparis.ch/carfinder/ma.../rapide?sort=2

 

He found an '11 that looks interesting that is on Comparis and Autoscout that plans to check out.