BUYING a car assembled in Cyprus by a non-qualified person could prove fatal, a mechanic warned yesterday.
He was speaking in the wake of the luxury car assembly scandal, in which suspects are accused of importing cars as spare parts – thus evading duty – and assembling them in Cyprus before selling them on.
Speaking to the Cyprus Mail, the mechanic said that welding a chassis should be done only by qualified professionals, otherwise the car could disintegrate in a heavy accident.
“Car manufacturers are the only people capable of spot-welding parts of a car together,” he said.
“But if an unqualified mechanic attempts to spot-weld a chassis, or any part of a car, that could prove fatal in a heavy impact. The car would simply fall apart.”
However, the man said that a car assembled by a qualified mechanic would be very safe, as he would use specifications from the manufacturer.
“A qualified mechanic would not spot-weld the chassis like the manufacturer would. He would use specifications from the manufacturer and he would weld the part or the chassis through and through.”
The mechanic warned that it was difficult to notice whether a car had been welded together, and urged buyers to make sure they took a professional mechanic with them when they wanted to buy a car.
BMW importer Harris Pilakoutas told the Cyprus Mail that the German car giant would not recommend or authorise the assembly of cars by anyone, for safety reasons.
“It depends how or what part you want to assemble or weld together,” he said.
If a car sustains damage in the front, then we ask the manufacturer whether we can replace the damaged part of the body with a new one, under company specs. But BMW would never issue a safety certificate for a car, whose chassis was cut in half and welded together with another chassis.”
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
