... instead of which I'm sat here in front of m'puter

It would have been a 450 mile round trip and it was all systems go until I discovered its (lack of) history. The car was registered in July 07. There was no history at all after Jan 2010, during which 3+ years, the car did 46000 (unserviced?) miles - and that assumes it hadn't been clocked.

I then checked the MOT history on VOSA and found two gaps, one of 4 months and one of 6 months. So the car had either been driven illegally or had completed its 46K miles in 28 months at a rate of 20K miles pa. And if the mileage recorded at the last MOT was right, I have to believe it's only done 3K miles during the last ten months.

I decided to save my time and petrol

 

Keep looking mate as there are plenty of decent cars out there what shape impreza are you after and what's your budget?

 

Hawkeye wagon, preferably an SL WRX as late as possible, maybe 50-80K miles and no (or trivial) mods. My big problem is the colour; I don't like black, white or silver and I prefer the light blue or (mica?) red to the darker blue so my favoured colours seem to be the ones I see advertised least.

 

Just To Say There Are Some "Straight" Cars Out There, And For The Record Mine Was Just Mot'ed And I've Only Done 282 Miles! In 12 Months, Been Away A Lot.

 

yep echo the sentiments above, i've done about 2000 miles in my blob wagon in almost 2yrs. time fly's and so do i most of the time.