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You're obviously kinda' ignorant to be condemning my 45 year successful history of buying and selling cars.
very few have anywhere near this sort of experience...
therefore that makes it immaterial to what a noob or an infrequent buyer might find useful
which is what the question is about after all... right?
Quote:
If you base your car purchase solely upon a Carfax report
I haven't seen anyone indicate that was the standard.
very few have anywhere near this sort of experience...
therefore that makes it immaterial to what a noob or an infrequent buyer might find useful
which is what the question is about after all... right?
Wrong.
Every buyer ... be it "an infrequent buyer" or a "noob" has access to professional shops with techs that can do a pre-buy inspection.
I don't expect every buyer to have the expertise needed to do a competent pre-buy inspection, that's why they need to pay a professional to do it.
That's the same reason I consult with a professional to create a website and run that for me ....
I haven't seen anyone indicate that was the standard.
What has been indicated is a complete total and utter confidence that Carfax is the "standard" by which a car's condition shall be determined as fit or not for purchase. Which is utter nonsense.
A car can have a history of abuse and poor maintenance rendering it unfit for further service, and it will not show up in a Carfax report.
What you purchase with your dollars in a daily driver is the remaining service life of the vehicle. Carfax does not indicate that condition. The car, under inspection ... does. Even an "S" title vehicle can have an excellent service life potential, which a Carfax report would condemn.
Try looking at post #3 in this thread. A Carfax report showing a leased vehicle gets a condemnation. A car with multiple owners gets a condemnation. Are these valid reasons for a purchase rejection if the car itself shows and inspects well? I think not.
Further, look at MacMuz's and John's responses. They are similar to my experience ... Carfax misses a lot of information about a car and then gives it a clean bill of health many times when, in fact ... it's not the case and a thorough pre-buy inspection reveals the condition of the car.
I've been paid to travel all over the USA to do pre-buys on site for my clients; yes, these were higher end cars and the cost of my per-diem, fees, and travel expeses were justified for the purchase. I can tell you that I've found many cars with clear signs of serious damage that had a clean Carfax report in the hands of the dealer or private party seller. In some cases, the damage was appropriately and properly repaired, but my client was now an informed buyer as to what they were purchasing. If they'd based their decision upon the Carfax report, they'd have paid way tooo much for the vehicle, or, in some cases, my client wanted a pristine vehicle and would have been mislead as to what they were buying if all they'd had was the Carfax report and a seller's representations. Again, this extends even to a BRAND NEW car purchase at a dealership for a car on an MSO.
The question was, is Carfax report always necesary? If it was, I'd have never been able to buy OR sell any of my cars before carfax existed. Obviously the same for sunsprit.
So the simple answer is no, it's not necessary.
I'm not an ASC certified mechanic, and I've never been burned by a non-carfax car out of the hundred+ I've owned.
100+ ? wow.
maybe if you could pick your cars better...
you would find one could that last you a while
You're cute ... but not funny.
If you'd been following the threads, you'd know that Merc63 has purchased many cars for restoration/repair and resale.
As have I. Just in the 30+ years of professional shop ownership specializing in high end German marques, I bought and re-sold several hundred cars.
FWIW, I'm a strong enough believer in knowledgeable pre-buy inspections that if I were to consider buying a car in a line that I didn't have expert working knowledge ... I'd pay somebody else to do the pre-buy for me as I could only do a generalized pre-buy, and what I want is the same level of expertise as I offer to my clientele.
If a private party car seller (not curbstoner either) has allowed you to examine maintenance records and the title indicates a regular (not salvaged) title, is there any need to pay for a complete Carfax history report?
Probably not.
But still, why the heck not?
After all are you some sort of car expert?
Someone with 45 years experience of buying and selling?
Or someone who has owned 100's of cars?
Unless you are some sort of used car buying expert...
anything that can give you some objective data has got to be better than not having it.
Sign up for the 3 car deal while you're at it and check the other two you like.
100+ ? wow.
maybe if you could pick your cars better...
you would find one could that last you a while
I like cars. I can't own all the cars I like all at once, so I own them sequentially. Some have been around for upwards of 5 years, some have only been around for 5 days (those were usually ones I bought as fix-up projects). Average is two years and there have been upwards of 10 cars in my driveway at a single time.
I have 4 cars right now, but recently sold my '63 Mercury Comet convertible and bought a Mustang convertible to go along with my BMW and Range Rover, GM dually and MGB. The MGB will probably go soon in order to buy some customizing parts for the Mustang. And the cycle continues. I've also located cars for friends and relatives (not counted in teh hundred plus cars).
Carfax is cheap and helpful for what it does tell you.
First, it does not tell you anything about the cars mechanical condition. You will need a mechanic to determine that and even then it is a bit of a crapshoot since a non invasive inspection cannot reveal many important details. Invoices from repair shop help in that regard. Cosmetics can be tricky. I think I can tell body work on a Mercedes, but many American made cars get body work before they get out of the factory and so it is chancy to tell if there has been a wreck unless you really know what you are doing.
Carfax does a good job of identifying how many owners a car has had and the progression of mileage. It makes a big difference if a low mileage car has had 7000 miles a year since it was new instead of two years at 50,000 miles and stored with no miles for 5 years after that.
Recently I had a friend call me to see if I could run a "two owner" car he was buying from a guy who said he got it from his grandfather who bought it new. It had six owners and a repo. And it was first sold when it was less than two years old. Not a good sign. Carfax would have revealed that.
(snip)Recently I had a friend call me to see if I could run a "two owner" car he was buying from a guy who said he got it from his grandfather who bought it new. It had six owners and a repo. And it was first sold when it was less than two years old. Not a good sign. Carfax would have revealed that.
This still totally misses the point of what a used car purchase is all about.
You are buying the remaining service life of the vehicle.
Not the "history" of multiple owners.
Not the financial problems of a prior owner that couldn't afford to buy the car and it was repo'ed.
Not the mileage/use history where it may have been stored properly with treated gasoline, fresh oil change, and in an environment where it was protected from the elements due to an owner's situation where the car wasn't needed or couldn't be driven ... I've seen this with everything from military personnel to family members with a debilitating illness, or elderly folk who simply couldn't drive anymore and so the car sat in their garage.
Not the provenance of ownership. The car that a celebrity owned for a time doesn't make it a better car than similar models, although for some celebs, that will add market value among the fans. But for the few cars that bring increased value this way, there are many owned by other celebs that don't raise an eyebrow.
Not the service records of a "famous" known shop that specializes in the make of car.
And so forth. What you are purchasing is the present day condition of the vehicle, no more, no less.
That condition can be reasonably revealed with a professional pre-buy inspection. It will not be revealed by a stack of service records, a CarFax report, or the representations of a seller ... who can and will frequently fabricate any sort of scenario/history that they think is what you need to hear to make a buy decision.
You are only buying the remaining service life of the vehicle under consideration. Condition, not paperwork, is what you will be driving down the road. Revel in the paperwork all you want, but it's not what you'll be driving.
Last edited by sunsprit; 05-28-2012 at 03:48 AM..
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