Motoring

People like us

24 March 2007

‘Good neighbours I have had, and I have met with bad; and in trust I have found treason.’

It’s partly also because many people want to drive a car before they buy it. They hope to spend a lot of time in it and if the seat is uncomfortable, windscreen reflections intrusive, the pedals awkwardly angled or the ‘feel’ simply wrong, then you want to know that before putting your hand in your pocket. But it’s partly, too, because to an extent we judge what we’re buying by who is selling. This is particularly the case with things that need maintenance in order to keep going. And if we’re selling something that means people calling at the house, we worry about who they are. What this amounts to is that many people prefer to buy and sell to people they judge to be people like themselves. People like us.

It’s not infallible, of course. I’ve bought good cars from honest men in sink council estates and overpriced rubbish from Philip Larkin’s ‘shit in the shuttered chateau’. The seams of human vices, like human virtues, run throughout mankind. It’s not really a question of wealth or status or class, but of values; most of us want to deal with people who share, however superficially, the values to which we also aspire i.e., who are reasonably honest, seek a reasonable deal and don’t write rubber cheques. And we feel that much safer if we know that those with whom we deal would be shamed if caught out acting in bad faith.

I don’t know whether such thoughts played a part in the recent launch of a new website, www.schoolstrader.com, or whether it was simply an inspired realisation of a ready-made market waiting to be born. Whichever — and it was probably both — it is certainly working.

It began as a kind of virtual shop window for the parents of children at three independent schools who wished to buy and sell baby clothes, toys, uniforms, books, computers, garden furniture, unwanted presents and whatever. It now features about a thousand schools including Benenden, Haileybury, Thomas’s and St Leonards Mayfield, advertising everything from jobs, houses and holiday lets to Italian lessons, farm equipment, horses, a gypsy caravan and, of course, cars. Parents, teachers, friends and family can choose whether to advertise nationally or among local schools only. And it’s free. Not surprisingly, it’s growing fast as our old friend Word of Mouth goes to work around parental dinner tables. Given the market you’re dealing with, there’s a fair bit of money available which, in car terms, translates into some appealing metal.