You are in the UK correct? Going to be hard to say based on that.

But I'll put in my anecdotal stuff. We have a 2002 BMW, bought it 5 years ago with 80k on it, had to put $2k into fixing it in the first year, it has 137k now and is going to need another round of repairs this winter.

I daily drive a 1997 Lexus GS300. We bought it a year and a half ago with 134k on it, 157k now and it runs like a top, no issues, no money put into it.

Look for something Japanese, Acura, Lexus, Infiniti if you want something nicer. Honda, Toyota, Nissan if you want more bare bones.

a compression test is fairly quick and can tell you if all your cylinders are banging well. that's money well-spent before you buy an old car.

---

____________________________________
https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

Look for something Japanese, Acura, Lexus, Infiniti if you want something nicer. Honda, Toyota, Nissan if you want more bare bones.


THIs^^^[/url]
Do a little research and find out which cars typically last a long time and can go a lot of miles. Then get the one with the lowest that seems to have been taken care of. A few years ago I needed a tow car for my RV and I found a 1997 Saturn wagon with 128k miles on it. I then looked at auto trader and other used car selling sites and I saw many with 200k+miles on them. They were just built well, back in their day trying to emulate the Japanese cars that could do 250k easy if you just changed the oil.
But you do have to pay attention to models and years, BMW's got pretty cheap after their heyday in the 80's and 90's. Other cars that were great not so much in more modern ones. I mean KIA gives 100k warranties on their cars now, they used to be though of like a Yugo.

2005 - no electronics. Maybe look into a non California 1977 Chevrolet Impala... As far as the rest of your questions, entirely academic. Replaced engine, repaired after accident? If either were done properly, no issues.

One other thing, if you want a vehicle in new condition then buy a new one or just do as I suspect you will do, piss off sellers by telling them all of the things wrong with their 12 year old used vehicle and then low ball them.

Honda Civic, done.

Don't worry about brakes unless it's ABS problems. Brakes are cheap to fix. ABS problems in that generation are prob no big deal as long as you are willing to get used parts and swap them out. A used ABS pump and computer from a junkyard is cheap. Get the stuff new from a dealer tho and it could be thousands.

Corrosion is a problem, especially anything structural. Look for flaws in the undercoating. Peel back the flaw a bit and bonk on the sheetmetal. Does is sound hard? Used cars in the rustbelt are a problem.

Transmissions can last a long time unless they are abused. Not an obvious problem area. Just feel it out on the test drive.

Accident damage isn't a crisis. In fact, looking for a car with a rebuilt title can save you a bundle. Be wary of flood damaged cars tho. They are very bad news. Don't buy a used car from a region that has had a flood in the last, I dunno, 6 months. Check also CarFax.

Engine. Read up on that engine type and get a feel for how robust then tend to be. Modern engines are pretty durable if treated pretty well. The problem is all the engine management crap. That stuff doesn't last, so assume that you'll have to throw money at engine management issues in order to get it to run well and reliably.

As a mechanic, the only car I know well is the old BMW 3 series, so BMW is really all I know. With that in mind, I wouldn't buy an older European car, I'd go Japanese or Korean. Those folks really have their acts together. Starting in the late 90's, imo, the durability of European cars really went downhill. They aren't, imo, designed to last. Their target markets aren't buying them to last 200k miles, their target markets tend to sell them once the warranty expires.

---

Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

If you already have a specific type (make/model) in mind, then do some checking on parts and possibly labour cost for replacement items such as the brake components, suspension (shocks / struts / ball joints and bushings) and exhaust as well as the major engine wear items (which should only be timing belt / water pump / spark plugs, in a modern engine). Those are likely to need replacing or refurbishment at some point and then you can amortize their cost according to where the car currently is with respect to replacement of those items.

For a modern overhead cam engine driven by a timing belt, its replacement is the single most critical maintenance item on the entire car, especially if the valves and pistons are of the interference type. There are a few cars where the timing belt can fail and the valves will not hit the pistons (or each other) but they're getting more rare, and a full rebuild on a high mileage vehicle is possibly not cost effective unless you got a killer deal on it. When doing the timing belt it is normal practice to also replace the water pump as well as any idlers or tension rollers on the front of the engine, since the cost of the parts is not high compared to the labour involved in getting it all in and out of there when you don't already have the belt off.

Transmission: For a manual, the clutch condition is a fairly important thing. Check that all gears operate without noise either on acceleration or overrun. If you're testing a rearwheel drive car, listen for driveshaft rumble or rear axle bearing noise. Not expensive to fix but best to avoid it. Front wheel drive cars may have worn CV joints - accelerate in a corner and listen for telltale clicking/rattling from the front shafts. The synchronizers may whine a bit when you engage from a significant engine/transmission revs mismatch but there should be no pre-engagement (grinding) or popping out of gear.

An automatic should shift smoothly but firmly in all gears. Kickdown should work. Manual override selection should work. The interlocks (neutral / park safety switches) should work.

Bodywork is pretty locale specific... the UK and Western Europe can have some pretty extended damp conditions so you're probably more used to looking at and for rust than many people in North America. Exterior panel rust is not good but structural rust is a real killer in terms of repair cost. So, look under carpets, behind sound deadening panels, and in the engine compartment as well as inside the fender (wing) panels for rust and also whether or not any rustproofing was applied.

I bought a 2001 Toyota Echo (Vitz to you, I think) with the 1500 cc engine, back in 2006. Since then I've put about 100,000 km on it and it's been flawless. The only repair I did to it, other than oil, brake pads and tires, was to have the front wheel bearings replaced because there was a rumble that we could not otherwise eliminate.

---

Less is more.

Reply to All

Very helpful

Looking for mechanic who can come with me - compression test

Have been looking at toyota aygo's. On german used websites they are going up to 250-300k km. I am looking for one with up to 100k on it so should be good to go.

Also looking at VW golf. Their seem to be many both diesel and gas that have 250k plus

Funny you mention the Saturn. We wanted to buy a winter car for my wife so she didn't have to drive her lowered BMW convertible in the snow. I noticed that a lot of Saturns were going for big miles so decided to go with that. Bought a 1997 Saturn SL2 with 130k on the clock in pretty good condition. God that thing was a POS! It never broke down, but we sure hated it. Built out of cheap plastic shit and uncomfortable as hell. But the last nail in the coffin for that thing was the amount of fluids it went through. I never had to change the oil in the 30k miles she put on it, I'd just keep dumping it in the top and it would burn it out the back end. Couldn't believe how much it could burn, then I had a look at the owners manual. They had the audacity to print in the damn manual that brand new from the factory, the engine was expected to burn a full quart of oil in a 3k mile oil change interval! A full damn quart for 3k miles! So at 140k miles on it, it was normal to burn a half gallon of oil in 3k miles. Absolutely insane.

She put a lot of miles on that commuting, then one day she needed to take my car so I took the Saturn. That was a Thursday, she went out of town on Friday, when she got home Monday the Saturn was gone and the 97 Lexus was in the driveway. Best $3k I ever spent buying that Lexus, beats the shite outta that damn Saturn. I just changed the oil in the Lexus last night, it got away from me and ended up at 10k miles since the last change, hadn't burned a drop!

Well that Saturn is plastic, one of the reasons I bought it for a tow car, it is very light and will fit 5 people. I haven't had the oil problem you did, well not once I changed the valve cover gasket. It does feel small, but I do like that it gets around 35 mph. And I'm not sure what they made those bodies out of exactly, but not one ding and the original paint is flawless(except for some sun damage).

I get your point, just that my $1k purchase price has been paid for many, many times and at around a 140k miles now it still runs great(well great as compared to when it was new of course)

And the big bonus has been that my insurance has gone down for the family, we were able to put my wife on that Saturn and take her off the newer minivan. Seems auto insurance companies do not care which car is primary, so if you go with the least expensive and oldest, your rates go down overall, something I did not know until we got the 3rd car...

Not trying to knock on your purchase, just sharing my experience. I am sure for a tow car it would be great, cheap, easy to fix and it did get good mileage. It just sucked as a car that my wife put 20k miles per year on, hard to keep up with it when it was burning fluid so fast.

Insurance companies tend to spread the rate over all the cars now. Used to be you could put a young driver on a cheap/old car and get a better rate, then the kids started wrecking the nice cars so now it really doesn't matter what car you are assigned to. Your rates likely went down because you added another vehicle. If you have more vehicles than drivers in the house, the rate per vehicle usually goes down, as they assume each car is getting driven less than if it was the only car you had.

We have a 2005 Toyota Corolla "s" model. Has 165k and runs like a champ. It also has a timing chain, no belt. Might be worth looking for one over there.

We change oil, buy tires and brakes...done.

Looking at a cheaper made car, you might also wanna check out the shocks.

A 'carriage ride' is really not all that pleasant, but maybe you drive 'conservatively' or don't mind the sway.