Buying Car With High Milage. Bad Idea?

RichardCUK

I have a 2018 Polo GTI and want a cheaper and more economical car.
I have £13500 on a personal loan but have seen a 2018 Hyundai i30 but it has 95,000 miles in the clock. It's £8,000. It has a full service history. It's a petrol engine. So it would be Ill have £6000 to take off my loan as my car is worth £14000 part ex.

Id a high mileage car a bad idea or should it be ok if it's had a full service history?

Is there anything I should be looking out for?

WellKnownSid

Is there a genuine history with the car i.e. main dealer knows the car from new or did it have 220,000 miles put on it as a police car then magically get its first MoT last week at just "94,400" along with a "stamped service book" from eBay?

How well has it (really) been maintained?  No expense spared including branded tyres (same brand all round) and a nice set of Bosch wipers - or a random name at each corner with a few bald patches.

MikeJXE

IMO yes

I have had dozens of cars and learned the hard way

I now look for average mileage, main dealer service history, regular oil changes, if any

 Manufactures warranty remaining. If older than 3 years MOT history. Record of any repairs or new parts. Pedal wear, discs and pads, tyres. Definitely a test drive plus some sort of warranty. 

I usually choose diesel, apparently the engine can do more miles if looked after properly 

The thing about changing your car is you are changing the one you know for the one you don't 

RichardCUK

The car isn't from Facebook or ebay it's from a garage but not a main dealership.

motorguy

Its not the worst idea in the world, but a couple of things to bear in mind -

Check for a maintenance history, not just a service history.  It would be good to know the car had got what it needs, not just the bear minimum.

How long do you plan on keeping it?  100,000 miles is still a psychological barrier on younger cars (not so much when the car is getting on a bit).  That car will nudge over 100K soon and it might start to become difficult to move on.  The seller dealer will no doubt tell you miles arent a concern but come trade in time, you might find a lot of teeth sucking being done...

Also, from your own perspective, how are you going to feel about driving a car thats quite a change down from your current car, but still paying the same monthly payment?

Also right now you're in a little bit of positive equity in the value of your car versus what you owe.  Buy the i30 and you've got a car thats worth maybe £5.5K trade price / $6K private sale should you want / need to sell.  Which is better, owing £13.5K on a car worth £14K or owing £8K on car worth £6K?

facade

What we are trying to say is that we don't know.

I30s have a reputation for reliability, but I always assume that any second hand car was "got rid of" for a reason.

You may be lucky, and it could simply be that the warranty has run out, and they want another car with warranty, even though this one has been perfect, or it could have had hundreds of warranty fixes and been got rid of now that there is no warranty to fix things- we don't know.

Whenever you buy a used car you are taking a risk because you don't know how it has been driven or what has gone wrong with it in the past (or is being covered up now....).

All you can do is make sure it has a genuine service history- preferably at less than the rather over generous modern mileages, and that the garage are likely to fix any issues you may have with it.

forgotmyname

Always buy high mileage cars myself. Not bought anything with less than 120k miles on for a long time.

I take them to around 180k miles before selling them on. Although the way the car prices have gone
I can see me taking my current car to more than 200k miles.

High mileage around 5 years old but it must have receipts for work done not just stamps in a book where
a garage will change the oil and stamp the book. It needs receipts to show what has actually been done.

If an MOT fails on worn tyres or failed lights then I wonder did they really take care of the car and look
elsewhere.

Car_54

motorguy said:

Its not the worst idea in the world, but a couple of things to bear in mind -

Check for a maintenance history, not just a service history.  It would be good to know the car had got what it needs, not just the bear minimum.

Do you mean the bare necessities?

RichardCUK

This is my dilemma.

I know it's always a risk with switching cars but I want to cut down my monthly payments and decrease my overall loan amount.

Some people say card with high milage a fine as long as they have been looked after and say people who run away from high milage cars have old views that cars for after 10 years and 100,000 miles.

Other say they wouldn't risk it.

Goudy

RichardCUK said:

This is my dilemma.

I know it's always a risk with switching cars but I want to cut down my monthly payments and decrease my overall loan amount.

Some people say card with high milage a fine as long as they have been looked after and say people who run away from high milage cars have old views that cars for after 10 years and 100,000 miles.

Other say they wouldn't risk it.

Only you can decide.

Do you really need to do it?

Would using more or all of the money from your Polo to buy a similar or newer, economical car that costs a lot less to run and insure be a better bet, then use the savings of running that towards your loan.
Perhaps something like a Yaris Hybrid would be better. Very economical, really reliable and tend to handle the higher miles a lot better than most cars on the market.
Under the bodywork they are a Prius and mini cabbers have been putting interstellar mileages on them without much trouble. 

jimjames

95k is not high mileage overall but above average for a 5 year old car. My best car was bought with 110k miles at 3 years old, I ran it for 10 years to 200k miles with standard maintenance and no breakdowns.