Things to think about when buying a car Part 2; the mechanical aspect

This is more for those of you planning to buy one of the multitudes of used auto’s currently on the market. Currently there is such a selection of quality used cars available that there is no reason for you not to get a solid reliable auto that, with proper care, will last you many years. I am going to focus mainly on purchasing from a dealer in this portion; there is just too much for one post if I were to include private party purchases.

The first thing anyone looks at on a used car is the mileage. This for years has been the staple for determining how much life is left in a car.

While this is a solid part of the equation, there are other things that need to be looked at as well. When buying a used car at a dealership, try to see if they still have the original window sticker. Out of the automotive buffet that is the number of used cars I have bought from dealers, I have found that more often then not, they have the original window sticker. One can get a lot of information about the car from this little gem. With the sticker you can see what options are really on the car. Not that the dealership is trying to be dishonest (we know they are), but they tend to over exaggerate the “features” of a car by light years. Especially on online ad’s

Taken from actual ads:
Console overhead mini with map lights
Headliner cloth
Key single 2-sided.

Really a two sided key is a feature on a car….

With that window sticker in hand you can quickly cut out the totally absurd portion of the listing and see what it came with. This also gives you insight to anything done to the car that was not original. For example if you notice that it has a remote start, yet nothing about that on the sticker then you know that this is something added on at a later date and should be inspected for the quality of the work. I have done more then my fair share of car stereo installations, mostly swapping out stock units for a better one, but I have done a few aftermarket to aftermarket swaps. While most of them the work was well done, I have pulled one out to see an amazing butcher job of the car's stock system. Now, when you are looking at the car, I don’t expect you to pull the stereo out to see if it was well done, but if it is not part of the features with which the car came off the factory floor with keep that in the back of your mind.

So you found the used car you like at the dealer with a good price. Is the price too good? Compare it to others out there. If you see a car that is priced far less then anything comparable, stick to the whole adage of “if’s it’s to good to be true, it probably is”.

One tool that has recently come available to help protect the buyer is Carfax. I have used this to great effect for cars I have purchased. The private party prices are a bit high in my opinion, but any dealer that is worth its weight in anything will be more then happy to give you the report.

The reports may not be totally accurate and can be fooled, but it is more effort to fool the Carfax then it is to just let it be true.

Recently a friend used this to confirm one hundred percent that it was to good to be true was. She was looking at a Suburaru Tribeca. Nice SUV, it's not one I would pick, but that is purely based upon my opinions of its looks. She found one at a dealer locally that was a few thousand dollars cheaper than anything of the other listings online. After running the Carfax report, she found out that the SUV has a Salvage title. This means that it was in a reported accident severe enough for the insurance company to “total” it. Now, it could have been repaired well enough to be a fine running car, but that is a big chance to take.

Another instance of this was very recently I helped my brother look for a car. He found a nice looking Mazda 3 for quite a bit less then any others. In the ad the dealer stated “Clean Title”. If you see this in an ad at a dealership, this is a huge red flag. All cars at any big dealer (not a little shop / junk yard dealer) should have clean titles. There is no real reason to state this unless they are trying to draw your attention away from something else.

In the photos of the car, I noticed a stain running across the bottom of the back seat from door to door. There is no amount of drink that can spill on a seat that can make a stain that stretches across the whole width of the car. When we looked at the front we saw stains on the bottoms of the seats at about the same level as the back. This car had water in it, enough water to come half way up the seats. That is a lot of water (I assume it was water, not sure what else it could have been). Now you don’t expect a car in California to get much flood damage, and it might not have even been reported (which would have hid it from Carfax). Again, this is something that if properly taken care of would not really affect the car in a long term, but looking at the stains I am willing to bet my left ear that it was not taken care of very well. Always be weary of there “Amazing Deals”

Now that we have found a car that is not a former demolition derby survivor, or something that was used in a deep sea exhibition, we can look at the more normal signs of a good used car and a troubled one.

Next on Gas Pedal Blues: an in depth look at mileage, and how proper care can be a better identifier of the cars condition.

Things to think about when buying a car Part 1

There are many opinions and ways to go about doing this, speaking from a few years of searching for cars, and buying them from all sources including private parties, dealers, junkyards, etc. here are my thoughts.

Consider what you need. Not what you want, but the actual needs IE: How many people can it comfortably hold? How much cargo space does it have? Does it have the LATCH system for car seats? Does it get the MPG you need? These considerations are going to get you in the general grouping of what to look for. Best to jot them down once you have the list of needs; you can narrow down your search drastically. Currently there is an abundance of good quality cars that will last you a long time out there. We will use my recent (and hopefully last in a while) car purchase as an example.

I needed an automatic (I can drive stick, but just incase some one else drives) with four doors, high crash test rating (my friends can attest to this need), ability to hold two car seats (nothing yet, but thinking about the future), above 25 highway MPG, and within my allowed budget for payments.

These needs left me with a pretty large list, tho the payment requirement narrowed it down. Now once I have the list of vehicles that meet all my needs, I was able to go into wants. What did I truly want in a car? Well reliability for me is a big one, also performance. When I looked again at the list of cars that fit the needs, I noticed that I was able to get a bit nicer car then I really expected. I found a large selection of auto’s that had options I had never really considered (but now enjoy).

Now be prepared to compromise on your wants, there were a few things that I did want, that this car did not have. Really think about what you want compared to what is out there, all wheel drive would have been nice, but it is not a need for me. Another want was the ability to add a remote start, unfortunately I can not with the ignition and ECU this car has. But with what was available to me, this car filled the most wants, and all my needs.

So you narrowed it down to a car that fits your needs and hopefully most your wants, the next step is important, you need to drive it. Seeing the car, reading about it, and driving it are amazingly different, one of the cars on my list was a great vehicle, a nice 2005 Infinity G35x. When I got behind the wheel of it I started to notice a lot of little things that irked me (these were fixed on the next generation, but that was out of my price range) the placement of the climate controls and their function, the shape of the steering wheel to name a few. I must have driven twenty different cars that fit my needs and most my wants. There was one car a 2006 Saab 93 Aero that I kept falling back on and started to compare the others against, this was the car for me. Defiantly not the car for everyone, but the little quirks it had were what was appealing to me.

A simple thing that I see people overlooking all the time, make sure it is a car you like. I have made this mistake myself a few times, I did not like the car, and so everyday I found more reasons to dislike it. Now with the car I have currently I like it, so the little things that annoy me are so overshadowed by how much this car fits me that I don’t really notice them anymore. Something else to accept, especially when looking at a used car, perfection is impossible, so stop trying to find it. Every used car will have something’s that need attention, it may be just a good cleaning, and it may be a new set of tires.

That is it for now, Next up I will spout my advice on the mechanical aspect of car shopping.

The First Post

I have helped many, many people pick their next car for purchase, and this is a skill I take some pride in. Having owned a majority of the different brands at some point, I find that I tend not to have much a bias on who makes it; I look at a car for its engineering and quality as well as appearance and joy of driving.

Hit me with your questions thoughts and anything else you can think of.