Farhaad Mahomed was concerned that the new car he purchased might have been test-driven by potential buyers after seeing it displayed in the dealership’s showroom. A Gauteng business man is in a financial nightmare as BMW Financial Services have taken him to court to demand R1.6 million over a luxury vehicle he never collected. The turmoil began in late 2019 when Farhaad Mahomed, riding high on the success of his business, made a significant investment into a brand-new BMW X3M Competition destined to enhance his fleet.
The 50-year-old from Lenasia in Johannesburg, bought the brand new car in November 2019 from SMG BMW Century City in Cape Town. To secure the car, he stated that the dealership required him to sign an undated finance contract even though the vehicle was still at the port of Durban. Before the deal was completed, Mahomed said he paid a hefty R200,000 deposit and BMW Financial Services financed the balance of over R1 million.
Mahomed arranged for the vehicle to be delivered to his local BMW dealership, planning to pick it up in January 2020 so that it could be registered as a 2020 model. Little did he know, this decision would plunge him into a legal nightmare. “If I had fetched it immediately in December, it would have been registered as a 2019 model and I would have driven it for just 30 days, for me it didn’t make sense.
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So we agreed that I’ll be fetching the car on January 2, 2020,” he said. “I was not happy because this means anyone who came to the dealership had access to the car and would have potentially test driven it if they were interested in it. This means the car was no longer new but a demo car and I was not going to accept it.” He provided IOL with an email sent to BMW, detailing his concern about the car being displayed in the showroom.
In response, the sales manager explained that the car was in the showroom due to the basement parking being full. The manager also stated that it was improbable for Mahomed to be the vehicle’s first driver, as new vehicles are typically driven multiple times before reaching their owners.
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