As I like to do when I've posted a quandry, I sum up. I try to only post threads I want proper answers to by having a debate. So:
It is very important to have a vehicle, especially an older vehicle, checked thoroughly by someone who knows what they’re doing before you buy it (I know, it’s on this site a million times, but I want to endorse it with the millionth and oneth :0) An MOT, just done on a vehicle, doesn’t mean you’re not buying a pig in a poke. Not only does an MOT not attend to lots of part-costing necessaries. There are hundreds of extraneous variables (including not just seller naughtiness, but possible third, fourth, fifth party … naughtiness in a chain running up to the selling or retaining of a vehicle, that even an expert can’t retain a conscious awareness of). For example, think about this hypothetical scenario:
A local entrepreneur has a little earner on the go. He takes owner’s cars into an MOT centre for them for a 40 or 50 quid back-hander. The entrepreneur has a discrete partnership going on with a rogue employee of the MOT test centre. The garage owner knows nothing about it (the local chap is giving the rogue employee half the backhander to get a car through its MOT illegitimately). The local car owners get an MOT, they save money because they’re not paying for extensive work to be done before ‘getting shut’ or keeping. The car remains on the road with seemingly legitimate insurance etc. Everyone’s happy, right?
No. The car purchaser won’t be happy, and if you have morals, you have a social conscience. Lives, livelihoods, physical and mental ill-health can result; criminal records, family and friend consequences, death, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. can be affected/occur. Even worse, it spreads a cancer, and it’s not impossible that your locality ends up like a hybrid of Royston Vasey and Wacky Races.
So. I’ve come to the end of working out my OP. If you are a seller, do the right thing. If you are thinking of being the link between a car owner and a garage, find another side-line like car-booting. If you’re the mechanic, you’re risking too much. Don’t do it. If you’re a victim. Well it seems, ultimately, that you’re just gonna have to get on with life and suck it up!