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Ok thanks for the responses. Now what if the vehicle is a "fleet lease vehicle"? I inquired about another vehicle and she said it was not a rental but leased. Any red flags with that?
Ok thanks for the responses. Now what if the vehicle is a "fleet lease vehicle"? I inquired about another vehicle and she said it was not a rental but leased. Any red flags with that?
A fleet lease is run just as hard as a rental because it's usually by salesmen or some other kind of hard traveling.
Before retiring, I was fleet manager for a government agency. We purchased all staff vehicles, slightly used, from rental car fleets, most coming off of leases. In my 20+ years purchasing used fleet vehicles, we never experienced anything more than minor issues one would find with any vehicle.
Most of the damage done to rental cars comes by way on not being careful with the interior or exterior, mechanical abuse is very rare. People don't rent cars to see how much abuse they can do to the vehicle. There may be rare cases where mechanical damage may occur, but very rarely.
As one who has personally purchased dozens and dozens of fleet vehicles over a 20+ year career as fleet manager, I would not hesitate to purchase one. Of course I would do my due diligence and inspect the car carefully as I would with any used or new vehicle.
The way rental fleets dispose of used vehicles is, the cream of the crop are kept by the rental company to sell on their own lots. The ones who don't quite meet their criteria are wholesaled off to dealers and other buyers.
Chances of a fleet vehicle being abused are no greater than any other car, probably less, because there is less chance of an foolish teenager getting his hands on one.. Teenagers and fools can readily get their hands on the family car, not so much with a rental.
I emailed a dealer and asked since the price seemed a bit too reasonable. He said yes and that rentals are better taken care of than single owner vehicles. Really?
Clearly, he hasn't seen me drive my vehicle and clean it compared to how I drive rental cars! Me and everyone else I know.
Rental cars are usually pieces of crap. Why would you want to buy one after hundreds or thousands of people have beat the hell out of it? Lord knows what stains are in the vehicle that you can't see.
It really depends on the car, not so much the former rental status. I drive a lot of rentals, and have had identical rental cars with more or less identical mileage that exhibited totally different characteristics and had obviously seen different use.
Also, just because a car was privately owned, does not mean that it wasn't owned by a blind imbecile who commuted in stop and go traffic, navigating potholed streets. accidentally driving over center islands, curbs, and regularly scraping off half the side while pulling into the parking structure at work.
But hey--Carfax says it's a one owner beauty, and it's never been hit! So it must be better than a rental.
A fleet lease is run just as hard as a rental because it's usually by salesmen or some other kind of hard traveling.
And again, while we all joke that that the difference between a 4x4 and a company car is that a company car can go anywhere, FALSE.
I put lots of highway miles on my company vehicle, (and some may put more city mileage on theirs,) but I do keep it maintained. If I drive like a yobbo and get too many tickets, etc, I could lose my company driving priveleges. I routinely have to take managers and occasionally customers in my car, so I treat it much the same as an office. I keep it maintained because having a breakdown when I'm an hour out from meeting a customer is more than inconvenient, it can affect my paycheck. On top of that, I don't defer anything for financial reasons; the leasing company has a maintenance schedule that I follow, and its covered by a corporate account. At 65K miles, the worst that can really be said about my car are the rock chips on the front of the hood/bumper that comes from a lot of highway driving.
The only way you can tell is to look at the car; some of them are better than others, period. If the car looks good, has a clean carfax, the interior is in good condition, the doors work, it doesn't stink, then go for it.
Generally, fleet leased vehicles would be properly maintained because at the end of the lease, they need to turn the vehicle in and go through the lease return process. Rentals are not leased vehicles. They are just sold after X amount of miles.
I've had some rental vehicles that you would think had 100,000 miles and were 10 years old when looking at them, but you look at the odometer and you see 14,000 miles and the vehicle is a 2014. Rentals are trashed constantly and driven extremely hard because hey, it's not my car so what do I care.
Of course there are exceptions to any "rule", but by and large, the rental and fleet cars are better maintained than your average personal vehicle. If you want evidence of that, next time you go to the mall and park your car, glance inside the cars around you. These things look worse than the city dump. And under the hood they are no better.
High volume used car dealers (not Billy's Auto Sales type places) regularly buy cars from rental companies and fleet financiers. The cars are fairly maintained, have low miles, and are driven (in spite of the "it's a rental, I drove it like an off road jeep" braggarts) fairly. Most rental drivers are business people who just want to get where they are going, do what they need to do, and get back to the airport. They are not intentionally abusing the rental car.
The large dealers who sell thousands of these cars each year many times offer them with the balance of the factory warranty, or a warranty of their own. They wouldn't do so if the cars were regularly breaking down and costing the dealer a lot of money in repairs.
By way of anecdotal evidence, my neighbor is a Corvette nut. He bought a 'vette out of the Hertz rental car program. There were NO issues with the car, which might be the poster child for a car that was "driven hard and put away wet".
It's just a myth that rental cars are a poor investment for the average joe looking to buy a reliable vehicle for a fair price.
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