I immediately contacted Motability who were as much use as a chocolate teapot and refuse to get involved.
While i genuinely feel with your son (the i4 is a stunning car, so as a gearhead i can 100% understand how your son’s feeling), there actually isn’t anything MB can do. The model isn’t on the scheme anymore.
The absolute most they can do is to reprimand the dealership for being douches. That’s it. I don’t know if a bit of finger-wagging makes any difference – while i’m less a fan of MB than i was years ago, on this particular one, the fault and responsibility 100% lies at Marshalls in Grimsby.
The only thing to do is to take your business somewhere else and chalk this up as life experience.
They’ve all washed their hands of it. Motability’s answer is there are plenty of other cars he can choose from. Not exactly the answer he wanted.
I bet it isn’t, but it is the only answer they can give. It’s not MB’s fault that the car isn’t available anymore, and if BMW doesn’t offer it to the scheme, then that’s that. I’m genuinely not sure what you think MB should do, or why they would be required to straighten out mistakes/crookery by BMW Marshall. We all know that cars that are not being offered on the scheme are simply not available to order. There’s no reference number to them in the system, so even if they wanted to, their system doesn’t actually allow for it.
So, there’s absolute zero way for MB to order a i4 at the moment. So the only other thing for them to do is, well, to suggest alternatives. As much as it sucks, and i agree that it does, this one is in no way MBs fault.
As for your son, well.. Yeah. There are alternatives on the scheme. They’re not beamers (i personally certainly wouldn’t take my business back to BMW or any dealership that does me like that), but nonetheless. My suggestion would be the Ioniq 6 – while not as pretty a car admittedly, it’s much better spec’d out of the box, and not that far off in terms of quality. If it needs to be one “of the germans”, there’s always the CLA 250e. PHEV, but certainly enough e-range to get stuff done. Hell, i’d argue that the car he “needs” is the Megane E-Tech, and take the difference in AP to have a nice vacation in Spain for 3 weeks.
In the end, it’s 3 years. Gotta cross your fingers that in 3 years the i4 is back on the scheme, or get a cheap used runabout while hoping that it comes back next quarter.
Prior: SEAT Ateca Xcellence Lux 1.5 TSI DSG MY19, VW Golf GTE PHEV DSG MY23
Current: Hyundai Ioniq 6 Ultimate
Next: we'll see what's available in 2028.