WARNING NOTICE: RACE MODIFIED VEHICLES AND THE LAW
Some of the services and replacement parts we supply (Race Modifications) will result in your (Race Modified) vehicle being illegal to use on a public road. Race Modifications are only appropriate for vehicles that will be used solely on private land (e.g. track days and racing circuits). A full list of Race Modifications is set out on our website. If we supply Race Modifications to your vehicle you acknowledge and agree (and it is a condition of our release of the vehicle to you) the terms and conditions here.
It is a common misconception that purchasing aftermarket and tuning products like sports exhausts and engine upgrades invalidate a car’s warranty. However, that just simply isn’t true.
Since the European Commission passed its new ‘Block Exemption Regulations’ in June 2010, it has become illegal for any dealership in the EU to invalidate a warranty as a result of a modification to the car. This legislation was brought about to help provide competition in the marketplace for repair and maintenance in the automotive industry and will remain in place until at least May 2023.
In the United States, there is similar consumer protection through legislation relating to the more general provision of warranties, under the ‘Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act’ of 1975.
This legislation means that you are actually free to modify your car as you wish.
Before this legislation came into effect, dealers were using restrictive warranty conditions to force owners to use official service and official manufacture parts to maintain their cars and to wrongfully deny warranty coverage.
Block Exemption law was therefore introduced to stop this uncompetitive practice. Without this legislation, owners faced the wholly unreasonable situation where they may buy non-manufacturer parts and the dealers could invalidate the warranty/cancel the service plan on the entire car, or (wrongfully) deny warranty coverage on a completely unrelated area to the non-manufacture part.
Therefore, no dealer is permitted to threaten to invalidate OR actually invalidate a warranty on your car if you do not use Official/Authorised aftersales services or if you do not use parts supplied by the dealer or original manufacturer. If a member of staff at your dealership says otherwise, they are breaking the law.
Block Exemption Regulations 1400/2002′ (in short ‘BER’) state that a warranty is not invalidated where:
- Parts used are of matching quality as the component used for the assembly of a motor vehicle
- Parts used are of the same specifications and production standards as those used by the Vehicle Assemblers
- Parts manufacturers/suppliers are able to issue a quality certificate
Once an ECU/Vehicle is tuned some dealer diagnostics tools can detect it’s been modified. You may loose your manufactures warranty by having your ECU/Vehicle tuned. We are not liable for loss of warranty or repair as the owner of the vehicle wishes to have their ECU/Vehicle modified.