Advice on buying a used car from a private seller

[M3 Mitch]

Maybe somewhat off topic but a friend of mine (the guy I bought the Scirocco from) is offering his 1990 VW Corrado for sale - same $3000. As an appliance car it's not as good as the Camry, but...

[marmac]

---Advice --

Be sure to try reverse.

We needed a cheap used car for my daughter in college.

One was in the paper ( 40 miles away) ---" good running condition"--
I called, we drove there on a cold winter morning ( Dec 24) met the nice man who said his wife bought a new car.

" Take it for a drive"---he said, We took it on about a 5 mile drive and when going through the gears ( manual transmission) I was impressed.

Luckily, I made a U-Turn a little wide and decided to back up.

IMPOSSIBLE to get it in reverse so we ended up pushing it backwards a little and drove back.

He walked to the car and smiled while he asked us what we thought.

When I asked about reverse, he stared at the ground,said nothing , and walked back inside his house.

I guess he knew about it, but hoped we never used reverse on our test drive .

[las vegas drunk]

Originally Posted by marmac

---Advice --

Be sure to try reverse.

We needed a cheap used car for my daughter in college.

One was in the paper ( 40 miles away) ---" good running condition"--
I called, we drove there on a cold winter morning ( Dec 24) met the nice man who said his wife bought a new car.

" Take it for a drive"---he said, We took it on about a 5 mile drive and when going through the gears ( manual transmission) I was impressed.

Luckily, I made a U-Turn a little wide and decided to back up.

IMPOSSIBLE to get it in reverse so we ended up pushing it backwards a little and drove back.

He walked to the car and smiled while he asked us what we thought.

When I asked about reverse, he stared at the ground,said nothing , and walked back inside his house.

I guess he knew about it, but hoped we never used reverse on our test drive .

Seriously, she already bought a car 2 weeks ago, so what does this have to do with vibrating at idle?

[mandavaran]

Originally Posted by las vegas drunk

Seriously, she already bought a car 2 weeks ago, so what does this have to do with vibrating at idle?

This could be good advice for someone else buying a used car. The thread title is buying a used car from private seller and lot's of people are doing that these days to save money. All of the advice given here, even though directed at OP, is useful information for other people.