WITH regard to the letter from Mrs M W Weatherall (April 14) concerning the dangers of buying a car privately, one will always be taking a certain chance but the advantage is thast one is more than likely to obtain a better price than when buying from the trade.

It's the same with all forms of gambling, and buying used cars will always be a gamble, the chance one takes and the knowledge one may have of the item purchased.

The letter (April 24) by R Angel concerning MoT certificates had its good points but unfortunately it also had its flaws.

One glaring fault was the fact that an MoT certificate is only good for the day it is issued, so the number of days or months left when purchasing a tax disc would make the idea of six months rather irrelevant, plus the fact that you can only obtain an MoT for a full year, whereas a tax disc can cover six months or a full year.

Just imagine if we were to go by what R Angel suggest and a full six months MoT was required to obtain a tax disc, it would mean that should you have five months left on your MoT certificate you would be required to scrap it and renew it for another full year.

And let's not forget that one may obtain a refund on a tax disc but not on an MoT certificate!

Very nice work for MoT stations (and the Government) but rather a thorn in the side for the poor motorist.

Another point R Angel has forgotten is the fact that even a computer check is only likely to be of any use for a given number of weeks, or even days, and if one is buying privately, who knows when the vehicle had its last test, and in any case not all older cars are capable of being checked by computers.

Most of the cars I have bought have been from private sources and I've had good and bad, the bad side is that there is very little or no recompense should things go wrong and legal action could prove very expensive, whereas when dealing with the trade one is on a slightly safer plain but would be expected to pay somewhat more.

Whichever way one goes about it there will always be an element of chance involved and if you are not prepared to take such chances I would suggest to always buy new (even that can go wrong at times).

S PETER, Shirley, Southampton.