One possibility for the odometer discrepancy is that someone had to replace the instrument cluster for some reason, although normally (hopefully) the seller would disclose this. This is especially true of clusters with digital odometers, as the mileage is stored in a mini “hard drive” and cannot be tampered with short of using factory tools, and a new one would start at zero. Used ones start at whatever mileage the last car they were in left off. My brother recently replaced the instrument cluster in his Jeep, not because it was bad, but because his original cluster only has a speedometer and fuel gauge, and he wanted full instrumentation. The used cluster he installed actually shows 7,000 more miles than his Jeep actually has, not that he cares because he intends to keep this Jeep forever.
Out of curiosity, is “low miles!!!” a selling point on this car? If so, that is shady. As for the 626, that sounds like a decent deal on a good car as long as it checks out good with a mechanic. The price can probably be negotiated down a little bit, and I would prefer the four cylinder over the six in that car. Not as snappy, but much cheaper and easier to repair. Transmission problems are unlikely as long as the car has not been abused.
Considering that halving the mileage on a used car can translate to thousands of extra dollars no one should be surprised at the length to which a shady dealer might go to get those extra thousands.
I personally know of a dealer who bought 3 instrument clusters from a local salvage yard and had them installed in 3 used vehicles in one day. All 3 vehicles were Ford pickups with about 130-140k miles each on them and the clusters were about 45 each from the boneyard with every cluster showing about 60-80k miles.
All 3 pickups allegedly had “bad speedometers”. That’s right up there with beach property near Phoenix…
The rule was that a speedometer/mileage change meant that it was supposed to be engraved on the door jam. The part about how firmly it was suppsed to be engraved, exactly where, or if it was even visible afterwards is a bit murky…
$3500 doesn’t sound too bad for the Mazda considering it’s only got 75K miles. If you’re not too familiar with cars it might be well worth your time and money to pay a mechanic an hour or so labor to give it a good going over to see if he finds any problem areas. Usually when I’m in the market for a used car I check the classified ads for low mileage cars for sale by individuals instead of dealers. Cars sold by individuals are usually cheaper than the same car on a dealer lot. I’ve bought several good low mileage cars like this in the past 30 years and they’ve all been good cars. The last one I bought was an '88 Ford Escort GL I bought about 3 1/2 years ago. It had been owned by an elderly lady who bought the car new and had quit driving. The car had 78K original miles, was nearly perfect inside and out, had a new set of tires and I bought it for $800. The only work I’ve done to it is put a new a/c compressor on it which was bad when I bought the car and recharge the a/c I was able to do the work myself for under $100. My other '88 Ford Escort was bought used in '93 with 146K miles for $500, it’s still running today with 518,500 miles.
Here’s the scoop. My husband got in touch with the Pep Boys in West Chester PA. They said the vehicle was listed as mileage unknown. The place that sold it to the guy who wanted to sell to me also said it was ‘mileage unknown’. Guess the guy selling it is trying to make a few extra thousand dollars. I got my deposit back.
Today we purchased a 2006 Dodge Stratus with 74,000 on it. One owner, private sale, Carfax clean. $4,000 for the car. I think that is good.
thanks again for all of the opinions!
Happy driving everyone!
Just a word of caution. Just because Carfax says it’s clean…doesn’t mean it IS clean. They only collect data on less the 5% of all repairs/accidents on all cars in the US. So chances are that any repairs/accidents on this car were NOT reported to carfax.
