Used car purchase - is it worth it?

Stubod

.I had the same Mazda for 17 years and never needed anything other than routine servicing...sold to a mate and is still flying through MOT's.

On saying that once you get to 10+ years old you are normally getting towards the vehicles end of life, (I think on average this is around 13.5 years?), so better to buy on condition and service history...IMHO....

lisah69x

Thank you everyone for your replies. To
clarify, I have spent 4 weeks looking at private sales and dealers and not finding anything that doesn't have something wrong with it or is massively overpriced. I have not looked at any specific car make or model. I have travelled upto an hour away on several occasions to view cars and have looked at lots of makes and models and different ages. A few times the car is nothing like the pictures or I've arrived  to see the car drive off as I get there. I have several friends and family looking for me and they haven't found anything suitable. 1 of them keeps sending me cars that are at least 15 years old and I although cars of that age can be fine (my Mazda was 16) I am wary of buying that age without knowing the full history and getting it checked out. I have paid to get some cars checked out to find they will need a few hundred pounds work done on them and I have paid to do a background check and found cars to be a write off maybe not a massive issue if only cosmetic but the prices they are charging, isn't reflected in the valuation so if I had another claim, I would be in a similar situation to now and get a lot less back than what its worth.
The prices have gone up since I started looking 4 weeks ago limiting my choices even further. I would be willing to pay more and get a loan but the prices local have jumped massively and the cars are just not worth that much. 

Grumpy_chap

How urgently do you want to have a car?  In normal times, I understand the run up to Christmas can be the most competitive for buying a used car.  In these unusual times, it is anybody's guess whether that pattern will be repeated.

Ganga

Homer_home said:

macman said:

lisah69x said:

AdrianC said:

"For an extra £100 he will MOT it now"...?
So it's going to fail? Because an MOT itself is £50ish.

Of those four advisories - two are for cloudy headlights, which I'm sure you saw when you looked at the car. A tenner and an hour of elbow grease will clean the old, hazy UV layer off and re-polish them. One ball joint that's on the way out - consumable...

And a corroded rear subframe. It might just be a bit of surface grot (hardly unreasonable on an 11yo, 110k mile car) or it might be near-terminal.

Thank  you. I showed him the advisories and said I was concerned about how much it would cost to do. He said he could MOT it for me but if they failed would cost him money to sort so would cost me £100 in case it needed doing. I don't think this is on top of 5he list price but the £2500 he dropped it to, meaning he isn't reducing it as much as first offered. A few other garages have said I can take care for a reduced price or they will MOT it without a reduction so I'm not surprised about what he said tbh. I worry that I'll pay that extra though and they are all still advisories and no actual work done. The lights were a tiny bit clouded, hardly anything. When I asked him about that on the advisory, he told me it was stickers - I didn't notice any stickers so must be the cloudiness. My Mazda was worse but it was never an advisory. He has said if I pay a £100 deposit, I can get it checked at my own garage. 

With that attitude I wouldn't be putting any business his way. It's usually a good idea to express some confidence in the product you are selling...
With a budget of only £2.75K your big mistake is that you are only looking at buying from a dealer. The overheads for buying and selling a car for £2.5K are much the same as one for £10K, so he'll be aiming to make £500 to £1K on the deal. You'll get far more for your money privately. The risk is no greater, as any add-on warranty you are offered on a car of that age and mileage is of no value whatsoever.
I'd agree with most of the comments above about Mazda reliability: I owned a 1st-gen Mazda 6 for 8 years and it was the most reliable car I've ever had. Until the eventual DPF issues occurred, the only fault I ever had was a broken seat height adjuster, which was a warranty fix.  When I sold it, it was still on the original battery and exhaust. The only consumables I used in 60,000 miles were tyres and a set of brake pads.

You never changed the air filter 

They state CONSUMABLES only ,i am sure they changed ALL the service parts.

mattyprice4004

Ganga said:

Homer_home said:

macman said:

lisah69x said:

AdrianC said:

"For an extra £100 he will MOT it now"...?
So it's going to fail? Because an MOT itself is £50ish.

Of those four advisories - two are for cloudy headlights, which I'm sure you saw when you looked at the car. A tenner and an hour of elbow grease will clean the old, hazy UV layer off and re-polish them. One ball joint that's on the way out - consumable...

And a corroded rear subframe. It might just be a bit of surface grot (hardly unreasonable on an 11yo, 110k mile car) or it might be near-terminal.

Thank  you. I showed him the advisories and said I was concerned about how much it would cost to do. He said he could MOT it for me but if they failed would cost him money to sort so would cost me £100 in case it needed doing. I don't think this is on top of 5he list price but the £2500 he dropped it to, meaning he isn't reducing it as much as first offered. A few other garages have said I can take care for a reduced price or they will MOT it without a reduction so I'm not surprised about what he said tbh. I worry that I'll pay that extra though and they are all still advisories and no actual work done. The lights were a tiny bit clouded, hardly anything. When I asked him about that on the advisory, he told me it was stickers - I didn't notice any stickers so must be the cloudiness. My Mazda was worse but it was never an advisory. He has said if I pay a £100 deposit, I can get it checked at my own garage. 

With that attitude I wouldn't be putting any business his way. It's usually a good idea to express some confidence in the product you are selling...
With a budget of only £2.75K your big mistake is that you are only looking at buying from a dealer. The overheads for buying and selling a car for £2.5K are much the same as one for £10K, so he'll be aiming to make £500 to £1K on the deal. You'll get far more for your money privately. The risk is no greater, as any add-on warranty you are offered on a car of that age and mileage is of no value whatsoever.
I'd agree with most of the comments above about Mazda reliability: I owned a 1st-gen Mazda 6 for 8 years and it was the most reliable car I've ever had. Until the eventual DPF issues occurred, the only fault I ever had was a broken seat height adjuster, which was a warranty fix.  When I sold it, it was still on the original battery and exhaust. The only consumables I used in 60,000 miles were tyres and a set of brake pads.

You never changed the air filter 

They state CONSUMABLES only ,i am sure they changed ALL the service parts.

By definition a service part is a consumable - it's a part that needs replacing on a regular basis.

missile

I would look elsewhere

mattyprice4004

LandyAndy said:

MalMonroe said:

Mazdas are expensive to buy and run, I know this as my friend has one. 

I have two Mazdas, both bought new in Sept 2009.
My Mazda6 has done 178,000 miles and my Mazda2 99,000 miles.  
They have been extremely economical to run because they don't go wrong.

So in summary - one poster's friend has one (yes, one - what a data sample) and it's 'expensive to run' in an unspecified way, yet countless posters have had no issues with theirs and find quite the opposite (myself included).

Interesting

facade

mattyprice4004 said:

So in summary - one poster's friend has one (yes, one - what a data sample) and it's 'expensive to run' in an unspecified way, yet countless posters have had no issues with theirs and find quite the opposite (myself included).

Interesting

I think what is meant is that, like most Japanese cars, very little ever goes wrong mechanically, BUT, if anything does, it costs an absolute fortune for the parts, whereas something like a fiesta or corsa breaks pretty much all the time, but the parts that break are available everywhere for pennies, (And every town & village has a couple of "specialists" with a mound of scrap ones round the back to take large parts off)

sweetsand

Dear OP
Why not look at cars, test drive and if you like it make a lower offer than you want to pay, if not accpeted walk away
and give them your number and if they don't call by the next day/pm give them a call ask if its sold and would they consider your offer and if not then tell them your real best price.
HTH