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Buying a low mileage used car?
So what your looking for is a Low Mileage car!
For some reason this is vital too you so please bear in mind.
Low mileage is at best are a reflection only of the number of revolutions the wheels have done
If I in car A where to drive to Glasgow a couple of hundred motorway miles, I would start the car once, it would warm up fully in say 3 miles, I would make say 10 gear selections and 10 clutch depressions. The car would spend say three or four hours cruising at say 3000 rpm. Then later on I return home the opposite way.
Or
I could in Car B do 20 two mile shopping trips of 2 miles there and back in heavy traffic at an average of 5mph (not as ridiculous as you think). I would start the car twice press the clutch and select first or second gear maybe 50 or more times, use the brakes every 10 seconds, the car would never get warmed up, and I might hit 4 or 5000 revs nipping into a gap. and then repeat it all again on the way back.
so now I have two cars
CAR ACAR BMileage400 miles40 milesRunning Time7 Hours8 HoursGear Changes202000Miles Spent on cold Engine640Starter Motor Usages240
So okay its an extreme and contrived example. But you tell me which car is more worn.
What we are saying here is the type of driving is more pertinent than the miles covered.
Remember 75% of engine wear occurs when the engine is started, its cold the oil hasn't circulated metal grinds on metal.
Ask yourself why lots of newer cars now use a service indicator rather than having a fixed schedule.
A Mercedes will light up the tell tale sign anywhere between 7 thousand and 19 thousand miles. So in terms of wear and tear a 35k model might be exactly as worn as a 95k model. After all its had the same number of services.
The use of Mileage to judge quality is a strange phenomenon related only to Cars. Most other forms of Transports, Aircraft, Boats etc don't quote mileage. They tend to quote a much more useful figure - hours running time.
The other question is how do you verify that low mileage. If a car is displaying 100,000 miles its probably correct or close. If a car displays 20,000 is it correct, are you sure , can anyone prove it.
You've only got yourselves to blame for the clocking scams, after all its you who makes a low mileage car worth so much extra money, and as such makes turning the clock back such a very tempting thing to do.
It does seem strange how we are all so stuck in the middle part of the last century. Remember in those days most cars never got any where near 100k before either falling to bits or being totally uneconomic to repair. In the good old days 70 or 80k was considered high, and many of the best engines (XK Jaguar) had design lives of less than 100k miles. Today any modern car that wont make well over 100k would be considered fragile.
Its worth noting the kind of owner the car has had previously, If the car has come from company lease hire no matter what the mileage its service schedule should have been adhered to the letter. As these schedule routinely replace major items and fixed intervals
Just to show you how ridiculous it all is consider an advert I saw for a classic car recently. It went along the following lines.
1934 ... Rare sought after classic in need of full restoration. ... Some parts missing ....warranted genuine 35000 miles only .... serious offers only in excess off .........
So *#@*##*!!! what, half of it was missing the rest was rusty, who cares how many miles its done.
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So there you go if you want a low mileage car, pay no attention to the cars general condition its baggy clutch and crunchy gearbox and smoking engine as long as its speedo displays a low mileage by preferably a careful lady owner you will be fine.
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Originally Posted by Ste
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