Higher mileage with FSH or lower without?

Petercw

So which would you choose:

1) Car 1 is November 2015 and has 40k miles and FSH

2) Car 2 is January 2016 and has 20k miles but has missed 1 service so has a gap of 27 months or 18000 miles with no service.

Cars are identical in all other regards. Both main dealer, both roughly the same price. Both 1.5tdci diesels.

Advice please!

Petercw

By the way, service intervals are meant to be 12 months or 20,000 miles.

Typhoon2000

Which ever is in better condition. If they are both the same, the one with the FSH.

forgotmyname

The one with something better than a FSH. A few stamps in a book means little. Where are the bills and receipts?

AdrianC

If the service interval on car 2 is 12mo/20k, then at 39mo/20k and a gap of 27mo/18k between services, it's missed two services. At a guess, the third service (12mo/3k ago) was the first since new? I assume the warranty is now expired, because it's certainly void. I'd also be sceptical about any "approved-used" scheme warranty on it.

The other car is only 40k in 41mo. It's hardly high mileage. No-brainer which I'd be looking at, assuming everything else equal.

marlot

Petercw wrote: »

So which would you choose:

1) Car 1 is November 2015 and has 40k miles and FSH

2) Car 2 is January 2016 and has 20k miles but has missed 1 service so has a gap of 27 months or 18000 miles with no service.
...!

It's quite possible that the 20k car has actually done a lot more mileage, but has had it wound back. Without some intermediate information you've no way of telling.


Assuming everything else is equal, I'd buy the 40k one.

shinytop

Which ever is in better condition. If they are both the same, the one that's a year newer and with the lower miles. The chances of one missed oil change doing any harm is small.

DoaM

shinytop wrote: »

the one that's a year newer

Nov 15 to Jan 16 is only 2 months (3 months at most, if 1 Nov to 31 Jan), and they'll both be 65 plates.

Petercw

Thanks all, you've confirmed my feelings. The higher mileage is a motability car so servicing should have been done as per the schedule. Or at least more likely.

Arklight

I would buy the ex Motability one. All the servicing will have been does as it should have been, Motability includes a free set of new tires so they are likely to be better, and there is little to no chance that it will have been clocked before being handed back.

Other than that it's a used car so is anyone's guess what will have happened to it before you got it, therefore buy on condition and look for obvious signs of misuse.

If it's Motability the person / people using it may have found it harder getting in and out so check for more scrapes on plastic around the door sills than you may expect. This isn't a reason not to buy it but better to notice before purchase than after.

System

forgotmyname wrote: »

A few stamps in a book means little.

Until you come to sell it and then to the buyers it is the difference between them being interested in it or not. Certainly the OP is an example of this as they're asking questions about the service history.