I’m still hunting for a second gen Toyota Sienna, specifically from a private owner. For the first time in history, I’m committed to getting a professional pre-purchase inspection. I have been incredibly lucky with previous used car purchases made with only my own examination, but I’m trying to be more careful this time. I don’t want to press my luck any further.
Many of the sellers are flakey or otherwise difficult to deal with, don’t respond, etc. On one occasion, when I asked about taking a car for a pre-purchase inspection, the seller rudely refused. A few others have agreed, but those cars never got to the stage where I would even consider them. And it’s hard to check out a car and then try to arrange the pre-purchase inspection that same day, meanwhile somebody else is willing to buy quickly.
I can understand a seller being reluctant to let me to drive away with his or her car for a couple of hours, supposedly to get the car inspected. I guess I would be also. So how else is this done?
Complicating this is that my rural location is a minimum of an hour away from the closest decent market (Sacramento) and 2-4 hours from where most cars are available (East Bay Area & San Jose).
Am I missing some good strategies for this? Road trip season is coming up fast, so I need to find the right new rig. My current '99 Sienna is still running fine, even has a new(ish) timing belt, but it’s over 335k, so getting far from home in that car is risky.
There is your problem - old vehicle and people who don’t have the time to mess with you. No surprise that someone did not want to spend time and may not sell the vehicle.
Road Trip ? Why are you not looking at newer vehicles ?
I don’t pay much attention to generation numbers but it looks like the last year of Sienna second was 2010. So I just don’t understand wanting a 15 year old or older vehicle to make long trips where repair service might be a problem.
I kind of think that money spent on current updating ( like a complete engine rebuild) might be a better way to go.
You are probably best off bringing the mechanic with you. That way you can decide the same day whether you want to buy the Sienna. The mechanic will need to bring tools like a floor jack and scanner to do a thorough job. This is likely an all day job and you should provide lunch at least. If the mechanic doesn’t have all the tools he needs because his employer provides them, you might need to provide them. You might rent them at an out parts store or Home Depot.
How many mechanics are going to agree to spending the most of the day going to look at vehicles that the person might not purchase . The poster says some of the vehicles he has seen listed are 2 to 4 hours away.
Yeah, a decent mechanic will be charging $100+ an hour, travel included, so we’re talking pretty big $$. $1000 for a PPI? I’d bring an OBDII dongle, scan for codes, look for rust and evidence of collision, and I would pull a Carfax before making the trip. Imperfect, yes, but no easy way to do much more.
How many shops are going to accept an emergency job that depends on a prospective buyer’s decision after a test drive, especially if they are unlikely to ever see the buyer again? Among all the bad choices, I think bringing your own mechanic is least unsatisfactory.
You do make a good point, and maybe the OP needs to pay the mechanic whether or not he buys the car. I imagine the mechanic would do this on his day off.
Another option might be to put a deposit on the Sienna and then get it inspected. Don’t expect to get the deposit back. It is meant to stop the seller from actively searching for a buyer and shows serious intent.
I haven’t sold a car in years and suspect I won’t ever again, but if someone showed up with a floor Jack and tools, I would not let them near my car. Why would I let someone I had never seen before start to take wheels off etc. sometimes the best sale is the lost sale.
Size up the seller. Check the general condition and expect to do some upgrades and repairs.
After intermittently following this board for many years, and reading consistent advice to get a pre-purchase inspection, I assumed that most buyers just automatically did that. I never have, but accept the wisdom in it.
Now that I’m committed to following that wise advice for the first time, I find it’s not so easy.
Early on in this process, I figured out a strategy that has worked easily enough for arranging the actual inspection. When I found a car online that looked like a decent candidate, I call a few shops near the seller’s location to inquire on their price and procedures for such inspection. Then I’d choose one, and in most cases, was able to be assured that they would be able to do the inspection in the time window I anticipated after seeing the car. In other words, drive to the car advertised, check it out, decide if I want to go forward, then call the shop to say I’ll be there at an agreeable time. That works.
The problem I have encountered is dealing with THE SELLER. Working with the shops was easy, most were very accommodating. Sellers…not so much. That’s where I needed advice.
I can understand a seller being reluctant, maybe unwilling to allow me to take their car away. I would be, so I get that. And leaving a deposit seems equally risky from my POV.
So I wondered if there were strategies that people here might have for negotiating with the seller on this part of the process.
I know enough to be dangerous I do my own inspections and accept the risk. If I was going to go this route, I might look to the home buying process as an example to follow.
Once you are satisfied this car is a contender you intend to buy, you make a purchase offer. I will buy this vehicle on contingency it passes a pre-purchase inspection. I will provide an earnest money deposit toward the purchase price. We agree on who will do the inspection and buyer pays for it. Owner takes it there and provides the report to the buyer. If there are deficiencies, we negotiate on price. If I decide not to buy, I get back the deposit minus some amount for the inconvenience and effort. If it were me, I might use a $1500 deposit and you keep $250 if we can’t agree on a price after the inspection.
Thank you @TwinTurbo. This is the kind of advice I was looking for. Thank you for laying out a logical procedure.
What you wrote is a bit different than I had intended regarding choosing the shop. Part of my strategy was to find out, when first talking on the phone, where the seller had taken the car for service. Then I’d choose a different shop, figuring the shop would likely have some bias toward THEIR customer. But at least now I have some good ideas to work with.
Perhaps 1%. The shops that I have worked in see 75 to 100 vehicles each day and one or two pre-purchase inspections each month.
You may have more used car buying experience than some of the people giving you advice.
If the person selling the vehicle is receiving numerous calls, they probably want to complete the sale in a few hours so their life can return to normal. This means that the buyer with the money can buy the vehicle now, after which they have all the time in the world to “fix up” this old vehicle as they desire.
Exactly. If a car appears like a particularly good deal, buyers will show up quickly, decide on the spot, with cash on hand. I knew that from the start. I have seen it play out a few times.
Being farther away works against me in such cases.
+1
The last car that I sold was my '81 Chevy Citation, and the arduous sale process took place in 1986. My ad listed the make &, model, the fact that it had a 4 cylinder engine, 4-speed manual transmission, bucket seats, A/C, silver paint, and blue vinyl interior, and I listed its odometer mileage. Here is a sampling of the wacked-out phone calls that I received.
Caller #1: What color is it?
Me: Silver, as stated in the ad.
Caller #1: Oh, I wanted a red car.
Caller #2: Does it have A/C?
Me: Yes, as mentioned in the ad
Caller # 2: I don’t want A/C. It’s just another thing that I’ll have to fix!
Caller #3: What type of engine does it have?
Me: It has a 4-cylinder engine, just as the ad states
Caller #3: I only drive cars with a 6 or an 8!
Caller #4: Does it have automatic transmission?
Me: No, just as the ad states, it’s a 4-speed manual trans.
Caller #4: How do you expect me to drive a manual transmission!?!?
Caller #5: How many miles on it?
Me: As I noted in the ad, it has 86k miles on the odometer.
Caller #5: I won’t buy a car with more than 50k miles!
After a few weeks of this nonsense, I pulled the newspaper ad and simply sold the car to a co-worker–for a LOT less money than I had advertised the car for. Taking less money for the sale was far preferable to being tortured by potential customers who apparently couldn’t read.
In the distant past, I mostly relied on judging the visible physical condition of a car, knowing that DIY mechanical repairs would probably not break the bank. I’ve done a fair share of those myself.
I used to say that if I have to spend money on repairs to a car I might buy, at least mechanical repairs would improve the vehicle’s reliability. Fixing a dented fender or bad paint won’t give me a single bit more reliability, and would also be very expensive. So I could make choices based on whether the physical condition was acceptable.
Not any more.
Today’s cars are so much more complex, needing much more diagnostic skill and equipment. Even for my '99 Sienna, replacing spark plugs and valve cover gaskets pretty much needs a lift, special tools, and more than my “figure it out” level skills. At 335k, it will probably die with (not of) those issues.
But two years ago, before i was in a position to spend for a newer minivan, I bit the bullet and had the timing belt replaced so that I would not be completely disabled far out in the boonies. I never regretted that choice.
Odds are that it would still survive this summer’s rambling, but after 8+ years with the '99, I’m antsy for an upgrade.
Gen 2 Sienna, specifically 2005 - 2006, hit a sweet spot. The engine in those is very highly regarded by a Toyota master technician with a hugely popular youtube channel. Starting in 2007, a new engine with a timing chain replaced the timing belt engine. Evidently, there were lots of engine problems for the next few years.
And Gen 2 has significantly more horsepower than Gen 1. It also has about 18% more interior space, which would be helpful for my specific usage.
This place was so wonky, I gave up. I was going to say when I was a kid I had an inspection and didn’t buy that car. I guess I have bought several without even driving them. I knew they would take some work. The corvair was in a farm field. They worked out fine but the Morris was a disaster. I expect to do some work on a $100 or $250 car.
I do my own inspections and accept the risk. If I was going to go this route, I might look to the home buying process as an example to follow.