5 Tips For Buying A Used Car So You Won't Get Screwed

Some of these might be obvious, but reminders never hurt.
It’s tricky going out to buy a used car. The obvious piece of advice is to not be a dumbass, but that doesn’t always work. In the wake of that beautiful 1968 Charger your mind floods with all the ridiculous things you’re going to do with it, and logic goes Mach 3 out the window. Fortunately there are some good ways to make sure you don't get screwed. This isn’t the end all and be all checklist for buying a used car, but following each one of these steps will certainly help ensure you don't get screwed over.

Make sure it has a title. There are two reasons to do this, and the first is because you don't want to deal with an obscene amount of DMV paperwork, especially if you live in California. Because of smog laws, not having the title is a complete nightmare to deal with when at the DMV. Make sure it has a clean title as well. There are a few ways to get a salvage title. One is if the car has been damaged somehow and the cost to repair the damage is more than the car is worth. Chances are you don’t know the guy selling you that Charger on Craigslist from Adam so he (or she), might lie about how it got the salvage title. Either way, finding out the hard way later that the car has frame damage is not worth the risk.

The thing to remember about mileage is parts on the car begin to fail after a while. Be sure to do your math. The average American drives approximately 13,476 miles per year (however insurance companies like AAA use an average of 12,000 miles per year to base rates on). Regardless, a car from 1996, which is 20 years old, is "allowed" to have approximately 270,000 miles. However just because the mileage is supposed to be 270,000 doesn’t mean it’s necessarily low. Now if a 1996 car has closer to 130,000 miles, that could be considered low mileage. Just be aware of the car's weak points, which brings us to the next tip.

Do your research. Check the recall history, because if you get this car from 1996 with a bad thermostat housing (like with E36 BMWs) without checking, suddenly you’re driving down a popular street and coolant starts bursting out from under the hood. It happens. Don’t forget to check with the dealerships before you fix something that was recalled. If they look up the car’s VIN and see that the recalled part wasn’t fixed, they should do it at no charge. Sometimes parts fail on cars that aren't part of a recall though, and depending on what the defective part is it might be a deal-breaker. If it's something like an A/C switch then that's probably OK, but a timing chain problem is something you should probably stay away from.

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