We've found a good couple of franchised dealer cars recently but HPI has shown outstanding finance on the basis of "unit stocking". The dealers have assured us that this is just their way of financing the cars, but we really are sufficiently put off by this red warning on the HPI to walk away. Is this something we should be concerned about? We just want a clean cut purchase not something we have to get indemnities for after handing over £20K or more? It seems the dealers need us to commit to buying the cars before they will clear the HPI warning.

Another concern was the use of pre registration - so one car sold with " 2 owners" turned out on questioning to be 2 owners plus a pre-reg as a demonstrator - so we would actually be the 4th owner, in 4 years - and when we come to resell the next person would be the 5th owner - something likely in my mind to devalue the vehicle by some thousands. This was again only disclosed after questioning and the on line listing by the dealer didn't mention this, again was only flagged by the HPI.