Buying a used car comes up daily in here. As a dealer who’s been buying and appraising cars since the 90s here’s a quick way to tell from a glance how a car was likely cared for. Here’s two cars that we just sent to auction.
The first car is a 3 year old Corolla w 39k miles. Why would I wholesale that?? Sludge in the engine. The second car is a 7 year old SUV with about 110k miles. We wholesaled that because if she and mileage.
Look at the tires… the Corolla
Is sitting on no name cheapo junk tires. And it’s been poorly maintained. The SUV is sitting on a set of matching and expensive Michelins. We know that SUV from day one and the owner took excellent care of it and it showed.
So…. ALWAYS look at the tires first! If the car is sitting on a set of quality name brand tires that match there’s a very high probability that it was well cared for. And I’ve rarely found well cared for cars that are sitting on mismatched Chinese no name tires.
Obviously there’s way more when it comes to due diligence but having appraised and bought many thousands of cars I’ve rarely found this to be wrong.
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