I'm going to be in the market for a used car in the next year or so. Anyone have advice on the issue of age vs. mileage? I can find cars that are three years old with relatively low mileage (let's say 3 years old with 50,000 miles on it), and I can find cars that are a year old with what I would consider high mileage given the age (say, 30,000 miles on a one-year-old car). Where's the sweet spot?
I myself tend to drive only about 7,000 miles per year, if that helps.
Eric
Average mileage is 12k/year. There's a reason warranties are 3 years/36k miles (whichever comes first) more often than not. In other words, a 3 year old car with 50k miles is not a low mileage vehicle.
Anyhoo, to echo points others have made to hopefully reinforce them:
1) Age can be a problem because as certain things get old - regardless of mileage - they will fail. Period. In some cases letting a vehicle sit is vastly more damaging to it than driving it all over the map.
2) Make/model are hugely important. While it's always possible to get a lemon or a diamond it still pays to research the vehicle to see how its reliability and cost of ownership stack up.
3) Cost of ownership is important. This factors in things like fuel economy, cost of basic maintenance, how long certain expendable parts last, etc. A truck has a higher cost of ownership than a car, for example.
4) Service records. If the owner has these, awesome. If not, well, it's a crapshoot. Dealers say they overhaul cars and do things like change the oil and air filter and a lot of them do. Other times, though, they'll do pretty nasty stuff like 'fixing' the brakes by replacing one pad only. This gives you the illusion of good brakes but is incredibly dangerous at worst and not gonna last at best. Additionally cars require things as they get older and more miles get put on them that a lot of folks don't care to take care of. Flushing the cooling system, brake system, transmission, etc and other things like potentially ball joints, hubs, etc are things not a lot of folks care about or notice when they go bad but
will cost you if you're not aware. So if you don't have service records make sure you take the car to a mechanic you trust before you buy it. If the dealership won't let you tell 'em to take a hike.
5) (Only potentially applicable) If you plan on working on the car, know the quirks of the model. Some cars are easy to work on, others simply suck. A late '90s to early 2000s Cavalier, for example, requires you to take off half the motor to get to the timing chain cover to get to the water pump ... after you take the engine off a mount and jack it up. A nightmare. So if you're gonna work on it, know its reputation.
