I used to buy a few cars at local auctions some years ago, some of which I kept and some of which I sold on. Overall I suppose I made a small profit, but that wasn't really the reason I did it; the fact was that I found the atmosphere exhilarating and bidding exciting. Whenever I actually bought a car I would drive it home the same evening; the possibility of getting caught and prosecuted for driving without insurance never entered my mind, which just goes to prove that I am not as intelligent as I used to think I am!

The fact is that some of the cars that I drove away were very sound, clean, roadworthy vehicles; but some of them were lemons. These tended to backfire, run on three cylinders, pump out smoke, or do kangaroo leaps; a couple of them did all of these and more besides. Since there is a limit to the checks you can make at an auction, sometimes the lights and indicators works; sometimes they didn't which made it very interesting when I was driving back in the evening, and darkness was falling.

I was extremely lucky never to have been pulled, particularly since options are a favourite hunting ground for police officers who need to boost their figures a little. A high proportion, probably the majority, of those cars that were driven away from the auctions in those days were uninsured so the place had a field day. Nowadays, with all the technological advances in crime detection, spotting an uninsured vehicle is child's play for a properly equipped police squad so nowadays the risk of getting caught is skyhigh.

This is not a problem however! Practically all well run auction houses have three Wi-Fi; the canny dealers now arrive with a laptop and, when they buy a car, they instantly get temporary car insurance for a few days, the cover them from the moment the transaction has finished. This means that they can drive home in the vehicle secure in the knowledge that they are not going to be pulled over and prosecuted for the very serious offence of driving without insurance.