Car Dealers that sell former rental or fleet cars? (Phoenix: rental car, rentals)

[mrshowtime3]

I live in PA and have bought my cars from this place called Blue Knob Auto Sales. They sell former rental cars and some former fleet cars as well. Mostly all 1-3 year old cars with usually between 15-30k miles. There is another bigger chain around here called Simmons Rockwell that does the same.

Anyway, to me its the best way to buy. You get very new cars in really good condition for great prices. And they usually have years of factory warranty left.

But Im going to be moving to AZ and havent yet found a place like this in google searches. Does anyone know of any in AZ? Doesn't have to be in just the Phoenix area. Thanks!

[DetroitN8V]

Enterprise sells their cars directly. I know how I treat rentals though and would never recommend buying one.

[observer53]

Budget and Avis sell theirs directly, as well. Dealers do non-rental fleet resales sometimes, I've seen ads. I don't know of any private dealer who resells rental cars.

[Jkgourmet]

I had a fruend who used to get rental cars for 90 days at a time when he travelled on business. In those 90 days, he'd put between 6000-8000 miies on the vehicles. Not once did he arranfe for an oil change.

Moral of the story: only buy a used car where you can review the maitenance records.

[mrshowtime3]

Any of these cars ive even test driven were in great condition. Rental cars get a bad reputation. Of course maybe this dealer I go to sorts out the bad ones. You are getting cars for usually 2-4k below book value with factory warranty remaining of 1-3 years. Don't be scared to try it IMO.

[mrshowtime3]

Originally Posted by Jkgourmet

I had a fruend who used to get rental cars for 90 days at a time when he travelled on business. In those 90 days, he'd put between 6000-8000 miies on the vehicles. Not once did he arranfe for an oil change.

Moral of the story: only buy a used car where you can review the maitenance records.

The 3k oil change has been long dead. Many new cars go 8-10k between changes. Many are using synthetic.

[Zippyman]

The rental car "pipeline" feeds nearly all the dealers in the valley - many rentals go through the wholesale auction & end up on dealer lots. Arizona doesn't require a "title brand" for rental/fleet vehicles, so there's no way to know if a vehicle was a rental unless you do something like a car fax. Some states do "brand" the titles of fleet vehicles (often giving the new buyer a pink or orange title instead of a green one), when they do, most buyers expect a discount, which is prolly why we don't brand them here..

Personally, I love fleet vehicles - in the case of things like oil changes & repairs, you don't have former owners who put off repairs because they can't afford them or don't have time. When I drove a fleet vehicle myself, I was getting paid by my company for sitting at the oil-change place instead of working, so I did 'em all right on schedule & let the maintence guys do whatever they could get paid by the fleet to do (trans flushes, coolant flushes, fuel system cleaning, etc).

My favorite place to buy cars here is public surplus.com. You can sort by state & select "motor pool" & you'll see auctions for municipal vehicles locally. Most are old, but there are gems with low miles that don't cost much to buy or maintain & the fleet managers are quite often extremely candid about a vehicle's condition - they don't want to argue about whether tires have half-tread or 70% tread, so some of them just put "bald" in the description, & that way the buyer is surprised & happy with what they get.

[Ponderosa]

Most of the cars at CarMax are rental resales.

[AZBradley]

Originally Posted by mrshowtime3

The 3k oil change has been long dead. Many new cars go 8-10k between changes. Many are using synthetic.

Oil can go that many miles, but not the filter.

[Jkgourmet]

Originally Posted by mrshowtime3

The 3k oil change has been long dead. Many new cars go 8-10k between changes. Many are using synthetic.

That's true - but I wanna see the maitenance records before they get my money.