VAUXHALL has ended its experiment in offering extended warranties to retail customers and Ford looks set to follow suit. Vauxhall's offer of three year/36,000 mile cover ended at the beginning of this month while Ford's is due to finish at the start of next month. Neither company said it had any immediate plans to reintroduce the offers.

Both companies introduced the extended warranties as a three-month trial offer on selected vehicles within weeks of one another earlier this year and went on to extend them for a further three months in June. They were widely seen as a 'toe-in-the-water' exercise following widespread calls for the European manufacturers to match their far eastern counterparts in offering full three-year/60,000 mile warranties.

A Vauxhall spokeswoman said: 'The extended warranty offer was a small experiment over a short period of time designed to see what the take-up would be. We will now evaluate just how much customers valued the extended warranty and although there are no plans to repeat the exercise, we may offer it again in the future.' A Ford spokeswoman said: 'The programme is currently under discussion and we are due to announce our new marketing programmes on October 1.'