Mississauga, Ont.The buyer arrives at the delivery centre at the time on the appointment confirmation. The buyer is met by a delivery specialist who is also, today, handling six other appointments at fifteen-minute intervals. The buyer is walked across the lot to a vehicle the buyer has waited four to six months to receive. The vehicle is in motion, in the lane, when the buyer arrives at it; the buyer has been allotted, on the dealer's own scheduling software, eighteen minutes for the entire delivery. Of those eighteen minutes, the dealer's own software allocates four to the paperwork, six to the orientation, and the remaining eight to what the company calls a pre-delivery inspection. Eight minutes is the figure the company has put on the act of confirming, to the buyer, that the vehicle the buyer is being handed is safe to drive away.

This magazine has, on file, a particular Ontario delivery from this calendar year. The buyer drove the vehicle off the lot on a Friday afternoon. The vehicle, on the buyer's drive home, exhibited a fault the buyer would later learn is a known issue in the model. The buyer was, by Monday morning, at the service desk. The fault was, on inspection by service, attributable to a step the pre-delivery inspection is supposed to catch. The step had not been performed. The eighteen-minute window, on any honest reading of what the step requires, did not permit it. The delivery centre had, however, signed off on the inspection. The signature was electronic. The signature was a person's name. The person, when asked, did not remember the inspection at all.

What a pre-delivery inspection is, when it is performed

A pre-delivery inspection, in any other branch of the Canadian automotive industry, is a defined sequence of checks performed by a licensed mechanic against a published checklist. The checklist runs to several pages. The mechanic confirms tire pressure, brake balance, alignment, fluid levels, electrical-system continuity, infotainment integrity, body-panel alignment, weather-seal integrity, paint defects above a defined threshold, and, in vehicles with assisted-driving systems, the calibration of the relevant sensors. The inspection, performed properly, takes between forty-five minutes and two hours, depending on the model. The inspector, when finished, signs the checklist by hand. The dealer retains the signed checklist on the buyer's file. The Motor Vehicle Industry Council of Ontario, which licenses dealers in this province, audits these files.

That is what an inspection looks like in the rest of the industry. It is not what an inspection looks like at the brand this article is about. This magazine has reviewed seven separate delivery files in this province in the past six months. In all seven, the pre-delivery inspection was logged at under thirty minutes. In four, the inspection was logged at under twenty. In one, the inspection was logged at eleven. The published checklists for those inspections, when requested, were unavailable in three of the seven cases. The inspector's signature, in five of the seven, was electronic and could not be reliably tied to a specific individual.

What the country's consumer law actually requires

The Ontario Consumer Protection Act, in its current form, treats the sale of a new motor vehicle as a sale of goods with an implied warranty of merchantable quality. The Sale of Goods Act, as a backstop, provides additional implied warranties around fitness for purpose. The Motor Vehicle Dealers Act and its regulations require licensed dealers to disclose certain conditions affecting the vehicle, and to perform a pre-delivery inspection. None of these statutes, as currently drafted, defines the minimum content of a pre-delivery inspection. None of them specifies a minimum time, a minimum credential for the inspector, or a minimum retention period for the inspection record. The statutes assume, in their drafting, that any dealer performing a pre-delivery inspection is performing the inspection in good faith. The assumption is the part of the law that has, in this generation, ceased to hold.

An inspection that cannot, on its own time log, have been performed is not an inspection. It is a signature.

What consumer law could fix, by the next legislative session

The province could, in a single short amendment to the Motor Vehicle Dealers Act, require that every pre-delivery inspection be performed by a licensed mechanic, against a checklist filed with the regulator, with a minimum time of forty-five minutes, with the record retained for the life of the vehicle, and with the file disclosed to the buyer on request. The amendment is two pages. The amendment imposes no cost on any dealer that is currently performing a real inspection. The amendment imposes a real cost only on dealers whose current practice is to log an inspection that did not occur. The amendment would, by structural inevitability, separate the two kinds of dealer.

This is the file the province has not been willing to open. The reason it has not been willing to open it is that the brand most heavily implicated in the under-performed pre-delivery inspection is also, by every available consumer-electronics metric, the brand the country's middle class has been most willing to admire over the last decade. The legislature has been reluctant to act against a brand the legislature's own constituency has been so eager to buy. The reluctance is understandable. It is also unsustainable. The brand will, in any reasonable five-year reading of the data, either fix its delivery process voluntarily, or have the legislature fix it for them.

The eighteen-minute promise

Eighteen minutes is the running time of an elementary-school morning announcement. It is the wait at a busy coffee counter. It is the time to make a serious phone call. It is not the time to inspect a four-thousand-pound vehicle that a citizen is about to take onto a public road. Every dealer in the rest of the trade knows this. Every mechanic knows this. Every safety regulator in every comparable jurisdiction knows this.

The brand knows it too. The brand has decided the inspection is a marketing expense. The country has decided, by silence, to accept the decision. The next citizen taking delivery this Friday will not be told. The next citizen back at the service desk on Monday will not be surprised.

Eighteen minutes is not a safety inspection. It is a signature on a form. The signature does not mean what the brand has it mean.

Fix the inspection, or stop signing the form.