“She’s so materialistic, she likes me to slap her bum with my chequebook”

On eBay car auctions one often reads of all sorts of reasons for cars being sold: birth, death, marriage, divorce, promotion, emigration. But rarely is the car an unwanted gift. Terry124 stated that he was selling his Mercedes E320 CDI estate because it was ‘a Christmas present for the missis, but she hated it’.  After years of scrutinising eBay car ads, I like to think I can distinguish between sellers who have a basic respect for the truth and those who habitually palter with it. But with this one I couldn’t decide. It had a ring of truth, certainly, and it ended on a touchingly plaintive note with: ‘I’m an honest man.’ But the car’s description, with the homely bit about ‘the missis’, could so easily have been an inspired load of flannel designed to appeal to the misogynist community. The car was exactly what I was looking for, however.