How new does a car need to be for it to be considered reliable and dependable? There are as many answers to that as there are cars and drivers. Modern cars are largely reliable for decades if well-kept, but deferred maintenance and sloppy upkeep can make a car look like it’s gone through hell in less than ten years. Clearly, not-new-car reliability depends on the car in question, but nonetheless, a British woman got a hard-and-fast ruling based on the age of her car alone from a company she had applied to: her 12-year-old car ruled her out for a trainee job at an estate agency.
The BBC reports that Alanah Thompson French, from Nottinghamshire in England, drives a 2014 Citroën C1 she bought last May. The small silver hatchback had less than 40,000 miles on the clock and one previous owner, making it a prime example of a good used buy for not a lot of money; she paid £2800, or less than four thousand dollars for it. It’s been getting her to work and back without any mechanical grief, and a car would continue to be a necessity were she to take the next step in her career toward working as an estate agent.
As well as sending a ton of applications elsewhere, she applied for a trainee lettings negotiator position in Nottingham in December. The estate agent company, which BBC names as haart, had replied that she didn’t make the interview shortlist as she had marked her car as being over 10 years old in the online application; they even had a separate box for the age of the car. She later received an email reply that the company had considered her application but ultimately decided not to invite her for an interview as they required access to a car newer than 10 years old.
In a statement provided to the BBC, the company replied: “It’s extremely important that people who work for us use reliable vehicles for their own personal safety, particularly where they travel many miles each day and often work alone.”
“Evidence from motoring organisations shows that the likelihood of mechanical problems increases as vehicles get older. For that reason, and in line with many organisations that require staff to use their own cars for work purposes, our policy is that vehicles should normally be under 10 years old.”
How Many People Even Have A New Enough Car?
This is certainly an interesting statement. For one, the average British car is around ten years old, according to the motoring organisation RAC; by the end of 2024, the precise average age was nine years and ten months. That means the average British driver would be on the edge of being acceptable for a position in which they would be required to drive their own car.
As Alanah herself says in the BBC article: “It’s just a bit of a kick in the teeth because obviously when you’re applying for jobs, you’re applying for loads and loads of jobs and to get an email back saying that … I just don’t understand it.”
“It doesn’t seem fair because how am I meant to afford a bigger and better car? And how am I meant to get insured on a bigger and better car?”
While the British used car market is usually priced cheaper than the rest of Europe, partially because of left-hand traffic and right-hand-drive, insurance is famously very expensive for young British drivers.
The situation is even worse for European drivers: based on this 2024 article using data from 2022, the average car in Europe was roughly 12 years old, and the economic situation has hardly improved after that. In the States, the average car is now nearing 13 years old according to S&P Global.
The Finnish Information Centre for the Automotive Sector states the average car in Finland is pushing 14 years. And to bring the point home to myself, when I last applied for a job, I was in fact asked whether I had access to a car for work. The fact my daily driver Corolla is over 25 years old didn’t matter, but perhaps it was deemed as reliable enough.
Does Being Nearly New Make A Car Reliable?
The woman named in the BBC article also has a reliable car, according to the RAC. The Citroën C1 is a badge-engineered version of the Toyota Aygo, also sold as the Peugeot 107, and with its Daihatsu powertrain in the gasoline versions, it’s one of the more reliable cars available for a budget sum.
And nearly-new cars haven’t proved to be as reliable as the Aygo: for instance, the now-infamous 1.2-liter PureTech engine has put a big dent in the image of Stellantis’ smaller cars, as the engine’s wet timing belt tends to crumble, blocking the oil passages with debris and requiring a big bill to put right. Stellantis has taken the step of rebranding its 1.2-liter engine line as the Turbo 100, backing the new motor with the statement that its timing chain and improved robustness would “increase driving pleasure.”
Ford isn’t off the hook, either, as the 1.0-liter EcoBoost engine, widely used in Fiestas and Focuses in Europe, also has the same wet-belt issue. Ford’s most troublesome units were produced up to 2019, and Stellantis only initially improved the PureTech with a timing chain in 2023, before introducing its successor that the company claims is more robust. These cars are out there on the used market, far newer than the stated 10-year cut-off for “likelihood of mechanical problems.” And a bad 12-volt battery can render any newish car inoperable, with the likelihood of the battery giving up the ghost increasing the newer the car is. Even the Toyota Yaris, a car considered reliable, is named in WhatCar’s reliability survey as having problems with the battery. The Nissan Juke, another popular car in the UK, got a ridiculous 50% score in another WhatCar survey, with the battery the main culprit.
But the likeliest explanation for the entire deal is that an estate agency simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to consider the multitude of vehicle choices when hiring new workforce. The blanket 10-year rule for cars means the least amount of effort needed to sift applications, as it relies on a simplified rule of thumb. It’s just that the current economic situation means more young people are applying for work while having a reduced budget to shop for cars to make that job happen, especially as new cars are increasingly more expensive.
In a Catch-22 situation, you need a job to be able to source a car, to buy one or finance it, but you also need that car to get the job in the first place. And while not every job lists a car as a requirement, a car-based economy with its long commutes means a lot of people need to rely on a car to get anywhere to begin with.
UPDATE, Good News
After the BBC’s article went online, the estate agency reversed its policy and welcomed Alanah for an interview. The company’s spokesperson stated: “We are extremely grateful to Alanah Thompson French for raising her concerns about our 10-year car age limit policy, which has now been dropped. Although it was introduced with good intentions, to ensure that colleagues use vehicles that are roadworthy and safe, it was never meant to prevent people from joining our organisation.”
“We are so impressed by Alanah’s tenacity in raising the issue. She is exactly the sort of person we would like to work for haart estate agents and we are contacting her to invite her for an interview.”
Top graphic image: Citroën
Translation: Agency caught having shitty rules that forces potential employees to spend money on crap they don’t need. Backtracks when challenged.
I know this isn’t a new problem as I remember watching some sort of documentary years and years ago on various 80s and 90s sedans in the UK and how important it was to businessmen to have the ‘correct’ ones to show their status.
“I would like to work for your company in exchange for money. This money may be used to purchase goods and services such as a newer vehicle. Thank you.”
I once worked where people who drove old, beat-up, hoopties, were not allowed to park their cars in the parking lot in front of office building. They had to park, out-of-sight, in the lot behind the building where people couldn’t see their cars from the street. Management felt that the condition of these people’s cars made a poor impression with prospective customers. OTOH, the employer did not pay their employees very well and most of these people couldn’t afford to buy newer and/or better cars.
I love how the future employer thanks the person who gave them bad publicity and whose “tenacity” forced their hand.
It comes across as fairly convincing and fair. I am not buying real estate in the UK any time soon, but I will definitely be using Haart if I will.
It came across to me like a company scrambling to undo some of the bad publicity they’d justifiably caused, but as I have bought property in the UK, I know that British estate agents deserve their reputation for mendacity.
I totally agree. They didn’t change anything until after the media got involved. They also haven’t given her a job, just an interview. They can still say she didn’t meet other job requirements and not hire her. Would be interesting to see if the next applicant for a job with them has to disclose the age of their car. I suspect yes.
My parameters are twisted from how things are typically done in the US. Happy for scraps, we are.