A contract hire car is not covered under warranty for the full term, if for example you have a Porsche contract hire vehicle leased over three years; in the final year it will not be under warranty. This is because Porsche provide just two years warranty.

Why do they do this? Basically because they can; if you want a Porsche , you have to accept it. They know that someone is not going to choose to lease a Ford Mondeo , because it has a three year warranty and the Porsche only has two.

Certainly driving a Porsche without a warranty is not without its risks; one of our clients who was leasing a Porsche Cayenne  experienced a serious engine failure. The cost of the repair was £17,000 which in this case wasn’t his concern because the vehicle was just three months old. What concerned him was that a nearly new Porsche could have such a major engine problem.

This prompted the client to take out an extended warranty, when the vehicle was approaching two years old. Of course if an engine failed in the vehicle’s third year, Porsche may repair it as a matter of good will but would you want to rely on that?

You do not have to worry about the warranty if you have a three year Porsche   contract hire agreement with full maintenance; the third year would be covered if anything went wrong. The alternative is an extended warranty; they can be expensive with certain manufacturers but this can be a very good indication of the likelihood of something going wrong with the vehicle. BMW and Audi , which rarely go wrong, offer relatively inexpensive extended warranties.

Most manufacturers do provide a three year warranty and now Kia are offering a seven year warranty; they are a very smart company, this has inevitably put pressure on other manufacturers to review their warranties. Kia leasing is well worth looking at; you can lease a KiaSportage for just £279 plus Vat per month. Ford have now introduced there “Lifetime warranty” but with a maximum mileage limit a 100,000 miles, if you want it to last a lifetime you will need to leave it in the garage quite a bit and catch the bus.

So is there another situation where a contract hire car will not be under warranty? There is and it is something that is often overlooked; when a car leasing contract is extended. Again this does depend on the type of contract; if you have a fully maintained contract then when you extend the lease, this would normally continue to be on a maintained basis. Companies often choose to extend the leases of their contract hire vehicles, in times of economic uncertainty, which is understandable, especially if they are considering redundancies.

It can on occasions be worth extending a lease and most car leasing companies will allow you to extend it for a short while, on an informal basis, if say you are waiting for delivery of your new contract hire car. If however you want to extend over a longer period, most companies will require a new agreement signed.

It is not always particularly economical either, whilst the client will usually assume that an extended car leasing term will be cheaper because the vehicle is older, it doesn’t always work out like that; sometimes it is less expensive and on other occasions its more expensive.

There is then the question of the warranty, if it is not already on a full maintenance contract, is it worth extending a three year contract hire term without extending the warranty? It is a risk with any vehicle; if you are unlucky enough to get a reoccurring electronic fault which the dealership can’t find, it’s a nightmare. If the vehicle is without warranty cover, it’s an expensive nightmare.Many companies that have extended their vehicle’s three year lease are not aware that if it goes wrong, it is their responsibility, not the contract hire company.

So are there vehicles that are worth taking a chance on and not taking out an extended warranty? It’s a risk with all vehicles, ultimately it depends how much of a gambler you are; if you are leasing a Porsche without a warranty it’s risky, if it’s a Jaguar lease car , whilst possibly less so, it’s also risky. If you are extending an Audi or BMW contract hire term, it’s less of a risk but you can still be unlucky.