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Originally Posted by Ronzi
Buying a used car is the pre-eminent example of caveat emptor. Buying a bad used car can be anything from mildly irritating to disasterous, with a bad Porsche tending towards the disasterous end of the scale, depending on one's own financial situation.
The reliability of the maintenance records can, and should be, one factor to be taken into consideration when making a buying decision. Not the only factor to be sure, but taking a seller's word for the efficacy of his undocumented maintenance practices when he has a heavy personal interest in the outcome of the discussion, has "gullible sap" written all over it. Maybe you'll get lucky and buy a car from Toolpants or MNboxster. But maybe you won't.
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Hi,
You are of course correct with your Caveat Emptor approach, but there's a reasonable limit. Do you restrict yourself to strictly one-owners? Or Cars under 30k mi.? Or Cars which are purely Stock with no Mods or Hacks? Or cars which have had no major repairs?
With each requirement you impose, you limit the field of available Cars and probably pass up several good ones in the Bargain. That would be OK if your search led you to the Perfect Trouble-Free Car, but there's absolutely no Guarantee of this happening.
Agreed, due dilligence is required, but don't lose sight of the fact that eventually you must make a judgement on the examples which present themselves to you. This judgement is much more likely to be correct if you base it
primarily on what you see and what the PPI tells you. And, realize that the only way a Car
gets a PPI to begin with is that you've looked it over and it appears good enough to warrant the expense of a PPI and further investigation. Whatever got the Car to this point, whether it be OPC or DIY Maintenance and Service becomes somewhat moot.
If you're comforted by restricting your search to only OPC Serviced and Maintained Cars, well that's up to you and certainly your right. But, you're likely to pass on some very good examples if you do.
Where I
might employ the percieved difference between an OPC and DIY Maintained Car is during negotiation. But, by this point, I've already pretty much decided that this is a Car worth having. So again, I'm not sure how much weight I'd bring to bear, rather I'd bring it up to see if I could benefit from it...
Happy Motoring!...Jim'99