Every now and then a news story appears that makes the motoring internet collectively tilt its head and say: hang on a minute.
This week's example concerns an 18-year-old from Nottinghamshire who applied for a trainee lettings negotiator role with estate agency haart. Her application stalled at an unexpected hurdle: the age of her car.
Her vehicle – a 2014 Citroen C1 – failed to meet the company's requirement that staff using their own car for work should normally drive something less than 10 years old. Tick the wrong box on the application form and that was that. No interview.
Which raises an interesting question. Since when did a perfectly serviceable small car become too old to have a job?
The first-generation Citroen C1 is a small, simple city car jointly developed with Toyota and sold alongside the mechanically identical Toyota Aygo and Peugeot 107. Under the bonnet you're most likely to find a 1.0-litre three-pot engine that has built a reputation for reliability. It's also cheap to tax at just £20 a year – about the price of a large takeaway pizza.
The example in question – owned by the brilliantly named Alanah Thompson French – has less than 40,000 miles on the clock and one previous owner. In C1 terms that's practically still running its first tank of fuel. In other words, in the grand scheme of British motoring it's barely out of nappies. It's also barely into double figures, so in Petrolblog land it's essentially a new car.
Yet in the eyes of a corporate HR filter, this 2014 city car is already past its sell-by date.
To be fair to the company, its explanation is simple: older cars are statistically more likely to experience mechanical issues, and employees in this role may spend long periods driving alone between properties. Reliability and personal safety matter – that's entirely reasonable.
But it also raises the question of whether the age of a car is actually the most useful indicator of reliability. Condition, maintenance and mileage tend to tell a far richer story than a number on the registration plate. A low-mileage city car maintained properly is likely to be less troublesome than a complicated newer vehicle that's spent its short life bouncing between short-term finance agreements.
There is, of course, another possibility. Estate agency has always had a theatrical side. Presentation matters. The suit is sharp, the lingo is smooth, the brochure is glossy, and the car parked outside the property says something about success. Viewed through that lens, the ten-year rule begins to look less like mechanical prudence and more like image management.
Which for someone like Alanah is a problem. New cars aren't cheap – you need the thick end of £15,000 just to get on the ladder – and insurance alone can feel like a small mortgage payment. The Citroen C1 in question cost £2,800, which sounds like a perfectly sensible outlay for a new driver. Far better than tying yourself to a PCP plan or swallowing the steep depreciation of a brand-new car.
There is something slightly tragic about dismissing a car like the C1. In our day, cars like this were a rite of passage. The bottom rung on the automotive ladder and the first taste of independence. It would have been perfect for the short urban hops a trainee lettings negotiator might spend their day making.
None of this is to suggest companies shouldn't consider safety or reliability when staff use their own cars for work, but blanket age rules can produce odd outcomes. Like rejecting a perfectly healthy Citroen that's covered fewer miles than many three-year-old company crossovers.
Or telling a young and ambitious applicant that the car they dropped the best part of £3k on isn't respectable enough for a job in property lettings.
Forget location, location, location – this feels more like registration, registration, registration.
Alanah, if you happen to stumble across this blog, thanks for flying the French tat flag. Your C1 may not have been good enough for an estate agency, but Petrolblog salutes you for buying an excellent first car. Don't let the corporate world drag you down.
There's a free French tat sticker waiting for you if you get in touch. Keep fighting the good fight.
And if you ever do get that estate agency job, we suspect the Citroen will still be running long after the office coffee machine has packed up.
Source: BBC News
