AN eagle-eyed motorist thought he was going to drive away a great bargain car -- when he read a comma as a decimal point.

Paul Smith, of Rangletts Avenue, Chorley, saw the E-reg car on the forecourt of SGL Rover, Bengal Street, Chorley, with a price in the windscreen of "£2,50".

Thinking he was about to clinch a brilliant deal, Paul offered just two pounds fifty for the vehicle.

"I saw it a few days ago when I was browsing," he said. "When I offered the salesman the money he was a bit taken aback and he refused.

"He was genial enough, but I think he just thought I was wasting his time."

Paul, 46, then realised the sign actually meant £250, but stuck to his guns believing the price a company have advertised is what they have to accept.

"I had a relative who bought a dining suite after it was advertised at the wrong price. The firm had to sell it to him in the end," he said.

"I don't think they were all that pleased. It was worth £900 and he got it for £9!"

Paul Kershaw, general manager and director of the SGL dealership said this sort of confusion had never happened before.

He explained that the sale signs are like computer text which arrive as blanks looking like a row of 8s with a comma, and that the garage colours in the blanks to show the price

He said the commas -- used to show a sale price, for example, of £2,999 -- were usually left untouched. "We've been doing it like that for years," he said.

Mr Kershaw added that both dealership and customer had to be happy with the price.

"When you are buying a car it is a two-way agreement. It's not like buying a tin of beans," he said.

A trading standards spokesman confirmed that the dealership would not have to sell the car to Mr Smith for the apparent asking price of £2.50.

She said: "Where a genuine mistake has been made we would never take anything like that to court.

"There would have to be something there to lead us to believe a firm were doing it deliberately to get people in."