Do they take you for your money?
On the other hand, if a garage is selling a vehicle and will NOT give it a new ticket, I'd be very reluctant to deal with them, and that car in particular , anyway. Making you pay to find defects they already know about is not a good starting point.
If buying from a private individual I'd say it's an absolute must.
The thing is that no mechanic, and no test can smell everything that might be about to happen. It's easy to spot a bucket o bolts, but even a well maintained car does not warn you when it's about to snap a timing belt, or that the injectors or coil packs are just about toast, or any of a great number of faults which can manifest themselves at some point in time.
If a Garage or owner isn't willing to allow you to have the test done, then walk away.
If a garage refuses to put the car through the MFK before you commit to purchase it then that often just means that they are willing to commit if you are. The usually have a pretty good idea of what the car would need, but they just don't want to spend the time/money if the car is just going to sit on their forecourt when you decide that you don't like the Starlet after all.
If the garage says "No MFK, and you're on your own if you buy it.", then what they're really saying is "It's a shed, you should walk away."
No.
Anyway, that's stuff I can do myself.
Tom
I often bought cars which were then put through MFK "for me", like just before I come pick it up/pay it. It's normal a garage would not M.O.T it while standing in their parking, waiting for a customer.
Like Ace1, MFK is good enough for me.
Like JagWaugh, there are things that can happen that are not foreseeable, not even to a mechanic. And the very few times a thing would happen "kind of soon", they were always very accommodating as in doing the work cheap or for free.
A TCS-test - for me - would be something to do when having to decide do I keep a car or get rid of it. But usually my garage can already tell me that
The problem is if you are going to buy a more complicated car, such as a M5 V10 or a F355, in which a compression test and/or a leakdown test are highly recommend.
I've inspected cars where the seller didn't object to me taking oil samples for lab analysis, but those were very special cars.
I sometimes take a Mototester recording device if it's an engine I don't know well.
For a Jag, just listening to it idling, and a couple of minutes driving gives me the information I'm after. Same for quite a few BMC engines.
But if you show up with a weekend warrior compression tester, and don't seem to have the slightest idea, then don't be surprised if the seller says "No, you won't be taking any parts off the car until you've bought it."