These Are Your Car-Buying Red Flags

Smokers cars. If you smoked in your car go ahead and cut the KBB value in half then subtract another $2k.

And yes, ever person who doesn’t smoke can tell your car still smells like cigarettes over the smell of 100x little trees black ice air fresheners.

May sound counterintuitive, but low mileage in old cars. It can mean the previous owner either only drove in traffic jams (hence the low mileage for old age), in short spurts (and hence the engine never quite operated under its optimal temperature range) or the odometer was tampered with.

For somebody who likes cars, I haven’t owned a lot of them because I hate the buying process—dealing with dealers. They do it multiple times a day. I do it once or twice a decade. Who do you think navigates this better? My current vehicles are 8 and 15-years old.

The purchasing process is somewhat better than it used to be since the internet made a lot of info available. But it’s also even worse since COVID because so many dealers are sticking more over-list-price charges to the bottom line. I know the dealer has to make money, but I never walk away from the dealer experience certain that I got a fair deal.

When I bought the 15-year-old vehicle, the dealer asked me if I’d buy it today for 40% off. Of course I would, because I could turn around and sell it back to him at a profit. When I test drove it, it had floor mats. When I picked it up, they were missing. If I can, I try to short-circuit the process through contacts. Seven years ago, I bought the now 8-year-old vehicle because I knew the dealer’s mom. I still had to talk to the finance guy, it took hours in the dealer to pick it up, the cover for the CUV’s cargo area wasn’t there, so they took one off another used car and gave me that.

A car with a filthy interior.

If the seller is so lazy, so utterly lacking in salesmanship that he can’t even bother to dress up how the vehicle looks, what’s that statement make about the rest of its condition that isn’t blatantly obvious? That’s right: awful, so walk off.

[Photo of iron oxide]

This red.

When a car just needs a simple, easy repair to make it perfect, but the seller can’t be bothered to do it.

“A/C just needs a recharge!” If it just needed a recharge, why not just go to Autozone and but a $40 recharge kit and sell a car with working A/C for way more money?

You’re not fooling me, pal.

Getting basic facts wrong is a surefire way to quickly lose my attention. My favorites are the BMWs advertised with V6 engines.

If it has a rebuilt/salvage title, I wont even consider it but also I wont deal with anything that is sold by a “Used Car dealer”. So its a regular dealer or CarMax for me when its a used car.

Private party for older/enthusiast cars.

For me, cars sold by mechanics.

Yeah yeah... there are honest mechanics out there. But in my first hand experience, when a mechanic dumps a car, it usually has some big issues that are either expensive or difficult to fix... so they will fix it up just enough to make it sellable and do things to hide issues... such as manipulating tire pressures to mask alignment issues, as one example I personally encountered.

I’d honestly rather buy a car off of a regular person who knows little about cars and is getting rid of their old car because they bought a new/newer car.

If the car was at one point a rental car. the great David Freiburger once said “the fastest car in the world is a rental car” no once cares when it’s a rental, they are beaten, abused, and spend nights in cold showers.

The car doesn’t match the ad. If you can’t tell that hub caps aren’t alloy wheels, what else are you misrepresenting/hiding in what you’re trying to sell?

Being a big guy, if I don’t fit, it’s a hard “no”. In most cases, it’s usually the sunroof that kills the headroom. And, no, I don’t want to recline the seat 45° just to fit.

Cars sold by body shops. They will claim that “oh, it’s a customer’s car just needed a head gasket.” When it is actually built up of the remains of 4-5 totaled cars that is more Johnny Cash Cadillac than a real car.

An obviously cleaned engine always makes me suspicious. If it was too dirty to sell without a steam clean or something, then it might deserve a red flag. Seeing a normal amount of dirt and grim in the engine compartment is better than sparkling clean (naturally clean is fine).

Show and tell. If your listings have lots of pictures and details, if you’re open about the history, and knowledgeable about features, pros, and cons, I’m interested.

For me, the amount of stuff you can show/tell me beforehand is directly proportional to the distance I’m willing to go to make the deal. Which is why my last two vehicles were purchased at dealers 2-3 hours away. Local dealers think three pictures and a one-sentence description of features is enough, but that’s because they’re all ran by 60-year-old white men two-fingering their way through an email full of weird capitalization errors and too many exclamation points. It’s not a 1x1 classified ad in the local tribune, Jim.

Also, can we talk for a second about what dealers choose to put as their selling points in online listings? You’ll see one that says “BLUETOOTH AND BACKUP CAMERA!” for a 2018 vehicle even though every newish vehicle has those vehicles. But then you have to dig through pictures or run the VIN to find out if it has actual good-to-know features like remote start, heated seats, CarPlay, etc.