How does one manage a pre-purchase inspection of a vehicle when you are buying a couple hour’s drive from home and you do not know any mechanics in the area where the vehicle is being sold. In my specific case, I am considering a six year old Subaru Forester with 50,000 miles. It is being offered by the used car department of a new car dealer.
Any advice on how to manage this would be appreciated.
The short answer is that you have to know what you’re doing - as in be able to inspect the basics yourself. But the other short answers are Q’s like what’s their return policy, their warranty, and their reputation?
You could ask the dealer to do a compression test. Then take a mechanic bud to check suspension, trans fluid tires brakes etc.
You could try a local online resource like Nextdoor. I read my local one and there have been several posters asking for car repair recommendations. When you get several recommendations. Do a few shops, call them, tell them what you want, get a price, and make an appointment when you are ready.
Would be nice to have, but I doubt a dealer would do that. Pretty time consuming
Here are a few questions for folks: how many times have you had a PPI done on a used car at a dealer? How did you get them to agree to it? Did you bring in a mechanic, or drive it to their shop?
We always recommend getting a PPI, but I can see it being difficult/impossible for cars at dealers.
Ask your trusted local mechanic what they’d do themselves in that situation.
Contact some other mechanics/shops in the area, ask what they charge to do a pre-purchase inspection. Be prepared to pay for their time, I’d guess around $100.
For what it’s worth, my local mechanic that services all of my cars said he’d do a pre-purchase inspection for me for free. That’s probably because he already works on all my cars. But you may luck into something, too.
I found a shop that specializes in Subarus (looking at a Subaru Forester) that is about 30 minutes from the dealer. I will see if they will let me have the vehicle for 1.5 - 2 hours to get to the shop and back to the dealer to have it inspected.
If you for whatever reason don’t buy the car don’t give the paper work for the check out to the dealer if they ask for it, if they want to see it, make them refund your money for the check out… I would not even show it to them… If they want to know, they can pay as you had to… lol
In my professional opinion, the dealership will not do this
The OP wrote that the car was a couple of hours away. That’s a couple of hours going, at least an hour inspecting and test driving, and a couple of hours back. I hope you bought him more than a hamburger for lunch, but also treated him to a nice dinner for him and his family…
My son was looking at a Pontiac Aztek that I did not think was a good deal. I convinced him that I would pay for Pre-Purchase Inspection (PPI) and if the car did not get a good report, he would pass on it… I convinced the dealer to do it when I said I would pay for it… easy-peasy… back in 2010 or so, it was about $75…
The Aztec was leaking oil and coolant and the transmission was giving indications of upcoming problems… He passed on it and bought a Dodge Magnum that the dealer sold as a certified used car and it worked out pretty well, but he did drive it hard…
In addition, engine compression is only one of 100 things you need to be worried about.
There are methods which will give you an idea of an engine’s mechanical health which do not involve removing spark plugs and performing a compression test
If the seller won’t let you take the car to a shop for a prepurchase inspection, don’t buy the car. If they ask whether you trust them or not, say of course you do and you want to verify that trust.
Have you had a dealer let you do that?
I guess I wouldn’t hesitate to just take it to the nearest subie dealer for an inspection. In addition to the normal issues, they would be more familiar with specific issues.
I bought one of my rivieras from a dealer. The car was perfect in and out and drove fine. I did access the crt though to go into diagnostics looking for any error codes. Just found a lazy O2 that cost $30. I finally junked it with 520,000 miles on it. Nothing against inspections but just depends. It’s hard to determine internal engine and transmission issues unless near the failure point plus electronics can be a major issue these days. Knowing the history can be an important factor.
My knucklehead thinking, if I owned a dealership I wouldn’t allow a customer to remove any cars,
used or new, from the lot on their own, for an inspection or anything else. The car would have to be accompanied by one of the store’s staff at all times. I’d be worried about theft and liability issues, among others. I might allow a 3rd party mechanic into the dealershop shop so they could inspect a car, but they’d have to sign a big liability waiver first.
That’s my thought. Still waiting for stories from anyone that was able to take the car from the dealer to a mechanic.