No refund for Auckland man after 2015 Jaguar suffers unexplained engine damage

Wednesday, 22 July 2020

A Jaguar XF S on a French street in 2012.

A man who purchased a four-year-old Jaguar which suffered extensive, unexplained engine damage has lost his bid for compensation.

Auckland man Jonathan Nilson, who had owned the vehicle for only a year and serviced it on time, took a case to the Motor Vehicle Disputes Tribunal after the dealer refused to cover his costs.

While the Tribunal expressed sympathy for his situation, an adjudicator ruled the used luxury vehicle was of acceptable quality under the Consumer Guarantees Act.

Details of the sorry saga emerged in a judgment from the Tribunal following a hearing in Auckland on June 2, before adjudicator and barrister Brett Carter.

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Nilson bought the 2015 Jaguar XF S for $39,990 from Penrose dealership Markham Motors in March 2019.

The newly face-lifted Jaguar F-Type is on its way to New Zealand (first published March 2020).

Months of happy motoring followed.

He drove the high-performance sedan to and from work and took it on longer excursions, as far afield as Wellington, putting another 17,588km on the clock above its odometer reading at time purchase of 118,122km and encountering no trouble with the vehicle.

But a year on, disaster struck.

The diesel-engined vehicle broke down just outside of Tauranga on March 7, 2020.

It was assessed by Duncan & Ebbett, a luxury car dealer in that city, which found the engine had suffered significant internal damage.

The dealer recommended dropping an entirely new engine into the vehicle at a cost of more than $44,000.

Markham Motors declined to pay for repairs so Nilson took his case to the Tribunal, seeking to reject the vehicle as unfit for purpose under the Consumer Guarantees Act.

The judgement noted Nilson serviced the vehicle on time, about five months after purchase.

A Jaguar XF S on Brean Sands in Somerset.

It had also been properly serviced throughout its life, according to documentation provided to the Tribunal.

Duncan & Ebbett in Tauranga believed the vehicle could have suffered a broken crankshaft, but an assessor for the Tribunal considered that unlikely.

The assessor said it was highly unusual for a crankshaft in a properly-maintained vehicle of the Jaguar’s make and model to break.

An older Jaguar XF S, photographed in France in 2012.

Instead, he said it was far more likely bearing in the engine’s bottom end failed, a more common cause of damage.

If the crankshaft could be refurbished the engine could be rebuilt for much less by a skilled engine rebuilder, the assessor said.

Nilson’s view recorded in Carter’s judgement was that the Jaguar was not durable enough.

“He says that the vehicle has been properly serviced, both before and after he purchased it, and that a reasonable consumer would have expected a well-maintained $39,990, four-year old Jaguar XF S to be free of such significant engine damage for much longer than this vehicle has been.”

Carter said Nilson’s position was understandable, given the cost of the vehicle and of the required repairs.

However, having taken account of the meaning of acceptable quality set out in the Consumer Guarantees Act, he deemed the Jag to be of acceptable quality.

“The guarantee of acceptable quality does not impose indefinite liability on the supplier of a motor vehicle, and at some point the risk of the vehicle developing significant defects must transfer from the supplier to the purchaser,” his judgement said.

He found a reasonable consumer would understand the vehicle had been well-used, travelling on average 27,000km per year before it was purchased by Nilson.

Carter said the risk of future defects developing was reflected by the vehicle’s used price of $39,990, a significant discount on the vehicle’s new price of between $100,000 and $130,000.

“Given the price, age and mileage of the vehicle at the time of sale, the length of time before the engine damage became apparent and the distance travelled in that time, I am satisfied that the vehicle has been as free of minor defects and as durable as a reasonable consumer would consider acceptable.”

Carter dismissed Nilson’s application to reject the vehicle.