Chermside and Gympie Road
Built on the road north
Chermside began as Downfall Creek, named for a creek that gave trouble to travellers heading for the Gympie goldrush from 1867, and coaches ran through from 1868. Gympie Road still carries the north's traffic, and it's lined with shops, factories, motels and car yards.
Drive-in shopping since 1957
Australia's first drive-in shopping centre opened at Gympie Road and Hamilton Road in 1957, and The Prince Charles Hospital followed in 1959. A car left all day in a hospital or shopping centre car park is where a weak battery gets found out.
Chermside or Chermside West
Chermside West has been its own suburb since 1975. Give the postcode of the street the car is actually in, so the job lands with a mechanic close to it.
Buying a used car on Gympie Road?
A car from a licensed motor dealer in Queensland comes with a statutory warranty, unless it's sold on consignment or it's on the written-off register. A class A car (under 160,000 km and no more than 10 years old) is covered for 3 months or the first 5,000 km, and a class B car for 1 month or the first 1,000 km, whichever comes first. To claim, give the dealer written notice of the fault.
Queensland's transport department says you can take a dealer car for an independent mechanical inspection during the cooling-off period. Do it before you sign if you can. Pre-purchase inspections in Brisbane explains what the mechanic looks at.
For a car you already own, the Gympie Road crawl is hard on brake pads and batteries. NRMA says a lot of start-stop driving wears pads out sooner. Brakes covers the signs.
What we'd do
Before signing for a used car on Gympie Road, we'd get an independent inspection. Then we'd put the warranty's end date in the phone and have a mechanic go over it again a couple of weeks before it runs out, which is what Queensland's own advice suggests.