Low-Risk Strategies for Buying a Used Car

Someone challenged me to write about how to buy a used car. The simple answer to that is to find a car you are interested in, approach the seller, give him money and drive the car home. But that would be cheating my challenger.

The topic should really be “low-risk strategies for buying a used car”. Although that title sounds more like a management text-book than it does a blog post, I think it more accurately describes the essence of my challenger’s challenge.

So what are the low-risk strategies you can use when buying a used car? The answer is that there aren’t any. You just have to take your best shot. Sometimes you will be lucky and find a good car, and other times you will end up buying a vacuum cleaner that sucks your money right out of your pocket. But there are things that you can do to minimize the risk of buying a four-wheeled-dud.

The first thing to do is to really ask yourself if you want to buy a used car or not. The high risk of wasting thousands on a lemon might be enough to push you to buy a new car instead. But new-car salesmen are just as bad as used-car salesmen. Certainly, the car itself will probably go okay, but new-car dealers will relentlessly push the buyer into buying all the extras. This often leaves the buyer with less in the bank account but some nice, fancy gadgets in the car that won’t ever be used (passenger-side airbags? Feh!). So when you are weighing the pros and cons of buying a used car versus buying a new car, just figure that you are going to get royally worked over no matter what you do. It’s easier when you learn to accept that fact at face value.

Never buy a car from a friend. That is my next piece of advice. You may have ridden in the car many times, or you may even have driven it from time to time. Over the years your friend may have described to you his dealings with car mechanics. He may have spun adventurous tales of danger and excitement, like the time when his car broke down on a busy six-lane highway and he had to cross to the other side to get to a phone booth, but was attacked by an angry chicken. You may think you know this car. But you don’t. For in the deep recesses of your friend’s mind is the thought that one day he might sell the car to you. So, whether he realizes it or not, he won’t tell you the full story behind the breakdown (he didn’t get a flat tire, the rear axle sheared itself off the chassis). He may not do it consciously, but your friend is holding back. I would believe the part about the chicken, but a flat tire? Come on.

Know to ask the right questions and then doubt every answer you get. “Has this car ever been involved in an accident” is a great question. Assume that the answer is “yes”, but you are more likely to hear, “I was once driving south on a vacation with my family, when the car in front of us spun out of control. Thankfully this car has great brakes so I managed to stop on time. The driver of the other car was okay, but his car had to be towed to the next town. Luckily my car is very powerful, so I attached the tow-rope and hauled it 100 miles down the road, in the snow, barefoot”.

Another classic question is, “When was the car last serviced?” The true answer is probably that Cousin Angelo came down last weekend and helped to get the car going by repeatedly whacking the starter-motor with a monkey-wrench. However, the answer that you will probably get is, “I service the car regularly. Unfortunately the service log-book was destroyed when I drove my car at high-speed through the collapsing wall of a burning building to save a trapped fireman, a small child and her teddy bear. I managed to save them and the car emerged unscathed, but on the way out of the burning building the fireman flipped through the log book, commenting on how I only used authorized mechanics, when a huge bird of prey swooped down, grabbed the log book and then dropped it into the fiery depths of the second floor, never to be seen again”.

So buying a car is a tricky sort of a business, new or used. If I were you, I’d just take the bus.

The Crash

On the way home from work the other night we passed the scene of a car accident. The vehicle in question had both its front and rear ends smashed in and it was positioned across two lanes. There were no other cars involved, although one could easily be mistaken considering the amount of broken glass strewn across the road.

It must have taken extraordinary skill to crash the car in such a spectacular way, especially since the road was dry, well lit, flat and very straight.

As we passed by, I glanced out the window and noticed the driver sitting on the road barrier. I know it was the driver because he was inhaling his cigarette smoke so deeply that, if he let go, the cigarette might get sucked down his throat. His foot was also rapidly tapping the floor. Two sure signs. What also struck me was that the barrier was twisted horizontally, creating a perfect place to sit. How convenient. Why not make the most of a bad situation, sit down and have a smoke?

Wait a minute, this sounds a little too convenient, don’t you think?

I never studied the skid marks, car wreckage, road barriers, paint scrapings or the satellite images, but I have a strong feeling that the accident happened like this: the driver was drinking a coke from an over-sized open cup while talking on his cell phone to a friend about a passionate subject like, say, sport. The increasing speed of the car matched the increasingly heated debate about the effect of brand-name sport shoes on performance. The friend then dropped a bombshell: the driver's favorite player just announced that he will be switching to a rival team. In shock, the driver fumbled his phone, which fell on the floor and slid under his chair, just out of reach. That’s when the driver swerved across multiple lanes and lost control.

The front of the car clipped the barrier on one side of the road and spun around, narrowly missing an elderly pedestrian, a child with a ball and a family of cute yellow ducks. In his panic, the driver couldn’t remember what a relative who had taken an advanced driving course in the 1970s once told him about how to come out of a spin: should I brake hard, pump the brakes, accelerate into the spin, turn into the spin, turn out of the spin, keep the wheel straight…? So he tried all options and managed to increase his speed as his car collided with the barrier on the other side of the road, ricocheting off it like an elastic projectile.

As the scenery went by anti-clockwise, the driver realized that when the car finally comes to a halt, possibly upside down, he will have to be at the scene for some time. He then stopped groping under his seat for the phone so he could concentrate on maneuvering the car to impact the barrier at just the right angle. He managed to point the car at the barrier and flatten the metal sufficiently so that it would serve as a seat where he could wait comfortably until the tow-truck’s arrival.

Just a hunch.

Speed Demons

Recently, Wired Magazine Online ran a story about a man and his friend whose dream it was to beat the record of 32 hours and 7 minutes driving from New York to California. The title of the article was “Totally Illegal Cross-Country Sprint for Glory.” Their mission was to travel at crazy speeds along public roads through various states, risking their own and everybody else’s lives in the process (I suppose that’s the “for Glory” part).

The amount of planning it took to set this whole thing up is extraordinary. Police scanners and radar detection devices are only the start. 150 hours spent devising a series of complicated Excel spreadsheets detailing fuel stops, routes and detours proves their obsessive determination, not to mention the spotter plane they arranged to feed them information from the air about police, construction and other obstacles up ahead. Planned down to the very last detail, two men and their tricked-out BMW headed off to break a 20-year record.

My first reaction was to envy these people for their daring, bravery and skill. Then I thought about it and realized that they are actually probably two of the most stupid people on the planet. Firstly, the “independently wealthy” brains behind the operation poured real dollars into the project. I mean real dollars – top of the line GPS and bumper-mounted night vision cameras don’t come cheap. Once you have considered the obscene waste of money, think of the danger in which these two hooligans put the public. Traveling at an average of 90 miles an hour means, at times, exceeding the speed limit by 30, 40 or 50 miles an hour. Even the author of the article admits “For occasional spurts, 90 is not uncommon on the highway. But for a day and a half of barreling across the United States, 90 miles per hour is essentially insane”. Overtaking 16-wheeler trucks on a single-lane highway in inclement weather at double the legal speed limit is way past dangerous. It’s an open miracle that they didn’t kill anyone.

All that aside, the legal consequences of their actions are tremendous - two guys on a premeditated traffic-law-violating-extravaganza. Of course, they boasted about it to their friends and family. After all, what is the point of going through all that with nobody to greet you at the finish line? If their fancy equipment were to fail, what sort of defense are they going to be able to propose if they get caught? At one point the article points out that, “Sitting in the passenger seat, Maher now looks around at the piles of GPS units, the maps and plans and scanners, the squawking boxes. He's sitting in an electronic crime scene”. What could they possibly say at their trial to convince the judge to set them free or, at least, minimize their sentence? They planned and committed crimes and then had the adventure published in Wired Magazine. See you in 15 to 20, boys.

Yet, despite all of the potential dangers, the two rev-heads made it to their destination. Racing from New York to Santa Monica Pier in 31 hours and 4 minutes, they broke the record by 1 hour and 3 minutes. Congratulations.

And Wired Magazine has a lot to answer for. The article was written in such a way that it might possibly inspire others with lesser skills, equipment, backup and experience to attempt breaking the record. Heck, even these two maniacs shouldn’t have risked the lives of the driving public, despite their expertise. Look at some of the comments left by readers of this article, “This is really cool…” and “Records are meant to be broken” and “I did it in 35.5 hours back in 1991…” Video clips of the ride and a video-tour of the modified car only help to increase the romantic notion that breaking the law and avoiding the police is a cool thing.

Call me a wet-fish, but endangering lives just to beat the clock is not admirable. It’s foolish, irresponsible and reckless. “Wired” should not have run the story. At the very least they should have published it before the statute of limitations expired on the crimes committed by these two lunatics. Now that would have been sensational.