Recent used car buying experience - some advice

[himegs]

Our oldest just turned 16, so I went shopping for a reasonably good used car for her. Buying a used car has always been dicey, but things have gotten much worse in the past decade or so. I wanted to pass on a couple of things I learned:

1. Low Mileage - Bottom line, cars equipped with digital odometers are laughably easy to roll back. More than half of the "very low mileage" cars I looked at bore obvious signs of having much more wear than the odometer indicated. (My favorite was the '02 Maxima with 37K miles, and rust around the bolts in the floor, where the seats tie down. New seats = new car?) I found that there are inexpensive kits everywhere on the Internet that allow a digital odometer to be set to whatever number is desired, in a matter of minutes. A 6-8 year old car with 35-40K miles is a rare commodity in the real world, but they are surprisingly common in the used car marketplace.

2. CarFax - For the most part, CarFax seems to function like most door locks. It keeps the honest people honest. CarFax information is fine, as far as it goes. Unfortunately, their sources of information are far from complete. The really savvy scammers have learned to look for shiny cars with incomplete, and therefore seemingly "clean", CarFax records. Order a CarFax report if you want, but don't stop there. If the report has something on it, then you know. If it doesn't, you can't assume anything.

3. By owner. If you find a good looking used car for sale "by owner", take a few minutes to check recent newspaper, Ebay, and craigslist.com listings. A lot of these guys are dealers, selling from their driveways. I found a large number of them with 10+ cars for sale, and several times that many in the last month. As a group, those were the worst about odometer rollbacks, and most of them offered up "clean" CarFax reports.

4. If you find a decent looking used car, force yourself to take the time to have a mechanic look at it. I turned wrenches all the time when I was younger, but there is no substitute for putting a car up on a rack, and having it looked at by someone who is totally impartial. (If you don't know a good mechanic, PM me. There is a shop near B&B that I actually trust.) I spent 30 bucks, and saved myself a bundle on one car that I didn't buy.

Note: I am not bashing CarFax, and there are reputable used car dealers out there. But in my recent experience, the scammers were so numerous that I started to doubt my ability to tell the good from the bad. It's hard to believe, but they are more shameless, more sophisticated, and much more plentiful than they were a decade ago.

[tony]

great thread!

ill add my $.02

if you for one second suspect a car is being sold by a dealer and is in a private party's name, run away. you have almost no protection when buying a car from a person. not that you have tons more in buying one from a dealer but some is better than nothing IMO. they know this and put the car in a name other than the dealership for a reason.

also, a bit risky but if you know a mom/pop dealer that frequents the auto auction some will buy a car for you at auction for a flat fee