About
About quvxo
This site is kept by a handful of private individuals living in and around Pretoria East. It is not a business, not a dealership and not anybody's marketing. It started because one of us kept being phoned on Saturday mornings by friends standing next to cars they were about to buy.
The first version of these notes was a printed checklist that got photocopied around a church hall in Hazelwood, then a shared document, then this. Nothing about it is professional in the sense of qualifications. What it has instead is repetition: between us we have stood next to several hundred pre-owned cars in Gauteng with a torch, and we have written down what went wrong afterwards on the ones that went wrong.
We write for people our own age. That shapes everything. We care about seat comfort after four hours on the N1, about aircon that still works when the needle on the thermometer sits in the high thirties, about whether a spares counter in Mokopane can help on a Friday afternoon, and about the dignity of getting out of a car in a parking garage without having to hold the door frame. We do not care how quickly anything gets to a hundred.
The money side is simple and we would rather say it than be asked. The guides are free. Some hours of our time are for sale and the prices are on the services page in rand. We take nothing from any dealer, we do not place advertising, and we have turned down two requests to write up specific cars for payment. If we ever do take money from a seller, this paragraph will change before the review appears.
We are also happy to be wrong. Readers have corrected us on transfer fees in another province, on what an automatic gearbox service costs now, and on the sense of a particular large family car we had been rude about. Corrections go into the guides with the next edit. Send them; the phone number and the form are on the contact page.
Three rules we keep
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A checkable number beats an adjective
If we cannot give you a figure in rand, a distance in kilometres or a service interval, we try not to make the claim at all. Vague praise is what adverts are for.
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Say the awkward part out loud
Settlement shortfalls, voetstoots, built-up registration status and the real cost of twenty inch tyres are the things people find out too late. We put them early and in plain words.
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No quiet commissions
Nobody pays us to point you at a car. The only money that reaches us comes from readers, for hours of work, at the prices published on this site.
What this site is not
- Not a dealer, not an agent and not a finance broker; we never hold your money or the car.
- Not a mechanical authority: when a car needs a verdict on its engine, we book an independent facility and read you the report.
- Not a place where sellers can buy a good word, however the request is phrased.
- Not a legal advisor; for a dispute over a sale you need an attorney, and we will say so plainly.