Buying a Used Car
Find out what that car is worth go to: Kelley Bluebook
Our Recent Experience
Recently I had the once again unpleasant experience of having to purchase another vehicle. It seems that our 1988 Subaru decided to come down with a case of seized engine!!!
If you buy used instead of new, you may find this information quite helpful. Over a year ago we had a bad experience. We saw a 1989 Honda Accord LX for sale along a busy highway. Just what we were looking for. The vehicle had only 64,000 miles and looked to be in pretty good shape. To make a long story short: We bought the car. Less than a half hour after picking it up, my wife got to looking a bit closer at the title. It was a 1988 and not a 1989! Less than 2 weeks later the speedometer stopped working! We took it to the local Honda dealer (something we rarely do) and they looked for the vehicle by VIN in their computer. They said the vehicle had been in there previously but that it had considerably more miles on it. So we checked with the dealer who first sold the vehicle when it was new. Same story. Then we contacted the original owners who were most cooperative. Turned out instead of 64,000 miles it actually had well over 190,000 miles. It took us about 6 weeks to get our money back after filing in civil court. On our recent search for vehicles, we found a 1989 Toyota Camry LE V6 with only 58,000 miles for only $5900. As soon as my wife & I pulled into the neighborhood we could tell this was another one of those deals. I asked to see the service receipts for the vehicle. The fellow selling the car must have thought that I was just looking to make sure the car had been serviced rather than checking dates and mileage on the receipts. Over a year ago the car was services and had 78,000+ miles on it and now it was being represented as having 58,000! This obviously happens a lot. The police will do nothing even if you report the crime. I guess they have bigger things to look after.
Getting back to our search for a vehicle: We looked at another '89 Toyota Camry V6 with AWD for $6500. We really liked the car even though it was automatic and we prefer stick shift. We kept looking. Our son saw an ad from a used car dealer for a 1988 Toyota Camry LE AWD. It was only a 4 cylinder but had a 5-sp. The price was listed as $3950!! This also seemed too good to be true! We had to check it out. We tried out the car this past Monday and on Tuesday they let us take it to our mechanic to have him check it out. We contacted the former owner and determined that the timing belt had been replaced and we were confident that the mileage of 114,000 miles was correct. Our mechanic did find a number of things on the vehicle that needed attention, the most important being the steering. Armed with his report and estimate for the repairs we made an offer of $3500 and the deal was agreed to! This seemed like a good deal to us. Retail book on the car was listed at $6085 if the car was perfect. Trade in value was at $2880. With loan value somewhere in between. (Kelley Bluebook on-line only gives you the two figures listed.)
My advice: If you're purchasing a used car whether from a private party or a dealer (unless it's someone you know and trust) always try to verify the mileage with some sort of receipts or repair history or documentation from a dealer or lube shop where the vehicle was serviced, especially if the mileage is represented as being unusually low or even normal. Always have a mechanic check out the vehicle. The small price you pay is worth it and it gives you leverage for making the deal.