Low Km's worth extra $$$

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grumbles

From what I see on Carsales many asking prices are aspirational rather than realistic and these same cars just sit there unsold. In fact from what I can gather many never even get an inquiry.

---

I have a car on carsales at the moment (not Landrover). I had it advertised at a reasonable price and was inundated with time wasters, tyre kickers and people who just wanted to see how low I would go. To give you an Idea of what I am dealing with, after telling a potential buyer I had rejected an offer of $4,000, he offered $3,000 sight unseen. It is worth $5,000 and was advertised for $5,000. Since I upped the advertised price to a ridiculous $6,500 the fewer enquiries have been more serious.The latest one offered $4,500 sight unseen.
But I'm rambling.
Carsales prices are where the seller wants to start negotiating at because the buyer does not want to pay advertised price.
In my opinion, low km (sub 100,000km) is worth extra as is service history. How much extra depends on the car and what you intend to do with it. If you are going to use the Landrover off road in anger, you will more than likely break or damage things anyway so I wouldn't think low or high km's would be much of a concern.

Im a mechanic and have worked untill recently with car dealers.
dealers fall over them selves to get one owner low km cars if used as daily cars these very quickly die.

I place no value on KM travelled.
its the condition of the product and what its been used for.

low km cars tend not to be serviced or cherry picked service with expencive engine trans and brake repairs required soon after purchase.

with more of these modern crap going in to new cars and long service intervals a used car purchase will soon not be worth the risk.electrical items forced on the public have no life span and fail without warning.

I purchased a 06 falcon XT BFII wagon at 105k ex university fleet lease managment.I purchased it for $10k on road from a wholesale dealer.ive now done 25k since christmas.with only plugs filters and oil changes needed as the service wsnt done before sale.
the tyres are due soon-it has 4 nct and i will replace with something similar-the spare is a triangle tyre-cant stop laughter as you can see the name through the window.brakes are cheep relacment and the fluid doesnt look like its been replaced-the coolant has.

to purchase the same car with 50k would have cost between $16-20K
this car will do hundreds of road kilimeters without major costs.and an engine/trans replacement wont cost $6-10K

my 1989 92k range rover came with $1000's or reciepts in replacment gearboxes/transfer case steering axles and the driveling is noise
y.it was sold as a no go because the owner decided a new car was needed when it would not start one day[fowled plugs].my 330K disco had a water pump and distributor fitted and the driveline is in good condition.

I once tryed to sell a 6 yr old skyline with low km auto sedan.
i advertised it cheep for a quick sale and got dozens of phone calls asking was it a turbo or top of the line sports models.

after weeks a neighbour bought it for more than advertised after I gave him a lift.

It is not as simple as saying that low kms is good or low kms is bad. Apart from the other things that have been mentioned, it depends how those kms were accumulated.

My daughter once bought an immaculate dual cab Hilux. It had about 70,000 kms but had been meticulously serviced on time rather than distance, so it had been serviced up to about 140,000 kms.

Sounds good so far doesn't it? However after a year or so it was found to have so much tar built up in the sump, that it was beginning to be starved of oil. Fortunately she noticed a slight noise, caught it early and no damage was done.

The problem seems to have been that it was an ex-RAAF vehicle, I think from Wagga, and we suspect that it was used mainly to drive down the airstrip to shoo the birds away to allow planes to land safely, then driven back without the motor having warmed up.

On the other hand I became the owner of a 1998 Camry that was 14 years old and had done just 124,000 kms, about 6 years worth of running. It has now done nearly 300,000 kms and apart from the usual consumables like timing belts, it has been trouble free apart from a water pump and a head gasket and a radiator.

if the low kms is the result of a large number of very short trips where the engine doesn't warm up, that can be a problem. I believe that it is more of a problem with diesels and particularly Toyota diesels.

On the other hand if the low kms is the result of infrequent trips long enough to get everything thoroughly warm, then a low km vehicle can be expected to give you more time before things begin to wear out.