I've been looking for a F-type to buy as a weekend car for the last few months and saw this V6S located out of state and it looks great on paper. It has less than 6k miles per year with a 2 year factory warranty + 1 year cpo warranty remaining. I requested their inspection report and noticed the front brake pads were 9mm and the rear ones were 6mm. 6mm is the lower limit beyond which they replace the pads. I'm not sure if this is something i should use to negotiate the price down or ask for the pads to be replaced. The rep told me the car had minor curb damage on 3 of the wheels which was fixed for 90$. He said the car is accident free but the original owner fixed a small dent for 65$. Apart from this everything looks good on the report. The problems in the report are all seemingly minor but I wasn't sure if i should try to negotiate the price down on the basis of the worn brakes etc.

The factory warranty makes it less important to get an independent pre-purchase inspection but do other forum members get a body shop to inspect CPO cars before buying or is it ok to closely look at the body panels, joints and gaps yourself?

 

Where did you get that info about minimum brake pad thickness?
Coz the official Workshop Manual info I have (admittedly about XF brake pads but the F-Type uses the exact same front brakes and only slightly different rear brakes) says that minimum brake pad thickness both front and rear is 2 mm (3 mm for the CCM brakes per the F-Type Workshop Manual) so 9 mm and 6 mm is plenty and nowhere near worn out.
It also says the new pad thickness is front 13 mm and rear 10.8 mm so in both cases the pads aren't even half worn.
Last but not least the brake pad wear indicators are meant to trigger at 25% of new thickness remaining so again nowhere near worn out.
I don't think you should try to negotiate the price down on the basis of worn out brake pads as you could come across as a bit of a dick!

 

I'm glad I asked because the inspection sheet says "6 mm minimum material " for the pads. I have never bought a CPO car before, how much should i expect a dealer to negotiate on the internet price?

 

Get it inspected if fully, CPO doesn't mean jack anymore. My F type V6s was a CPO and they swore the car was perfect, never hit or painted, and a few weeks later they accidentally gave me the invoice for all the parts THEY replaced and billed the insurance for after it was involved in a front end impact. The car also came with cheap tires and I'd even go as far as to say take it another dealer for inspection. My car's warranty has already paid out over $30,000 in 10 Months

 

If they serviced or fixed the car, they can keep it off carfax. What really matters to resale is if carfax calls it accident free or not, because that's what drives the car value on the used market. If carfax shows an accident, no matter how minor, you can figure the car will bring 20-30% less in resale value. If an accident is recent, it might appear after you buy the car so let it settle for a while if possible.

I would never buy a car today with an accident reported in carfax, it is too damaging to resale with so many accident free cars on the used market. Whether or not the car has been in an accident or not is a different question and carfax is not of much value figuring that out.

How can a car have less CPO than factory warranty? CPO is 6 or 7 years, depending on what the dealer chose, from the in-service date or 100K miles. You can negotiate to increase the CPO to the full 7 years if the dealer you are working with did the certification.

Lastly, do not accept the car until the correct CPO warranty expiration date is reflected in the official Jag database printout.

 

Your right I would never buy a car with body or frame damage, and being a cpo and having a clean Carfax I was dumb enough to take their word about it and Since I bought the car at night ( yes I know) I didn't notice some little gaps not lining up perfectly. But its okay the Lawyers are taking care of it now.

 

The CPO warranty kicks in after the factory warranty expires so it has a total of 2+1 years of warranty remaining.

 

Oh, OK now I see what you meant. So this is probably a 2016 with a late 2015 in-service date plus a 6 year CPO extending from late 2020 to late 2021?

The only thing is that warranty is of great value to your purchase, but if you keep the car a year or two and decide to sell it won't help your resale. The loss of the factory warranty will drop the value a lot, and most people don't really understand CPO. Once you have no warranty its a much tougher sale. So I'd definitely try to extend the CPO to 7 as part of your negotionation. Figure $1200 for the extra year in dealer cost. Get it in writing and don't take car car til the computer dates are right. Just don't.

 

The in-service date is mid 2016 and the CPO warranty ends mid 2022, so if i buy it now i would have about 3 years of warranty.

 

How would you go about negotiating a CPO that's been on the lot for a few months and has dropped >5k in price during that time? I'm not sure how further down a dealer would go in this situation.

 

From your original description, the things listed sound very minor. If the price is inline with what you see for similar cars (options, mileage, etc) being offered in the market, then you should be good to go. Don't blow a good thing by trying to nickle and dime the dealership.

 

Don't trust anything salesperson tells you. That minor dent PO fixed could easily be a car flipping 6 times going 120mph. Pull VIN report (e.g. carfax) and do a title search yourself.

If everything checks out, pull comparable values from Black Book, average asking point should be your starting point in negotiations.

If the car has ceramic brakes (unlikely on S but possible), then you are looking at 10K for a brake job. Otherwise it is couple hundred to get it done.

 

The dealer is refusing to give me a service history for the vehicle, even though it was a lease through a sister dealership in the same area. He says he spoke to this service advisor and they don't have access to it. I feel this is BS but I wanted to know everyone''s thoughts since I'm inexperienced in buying CPO cars.

 

It is BS, but its standard for most car dealers. Jags warranty service is generally good, but I did switch to my second closest dealer to avoid a poor dealership. The farther one is great.

 

A 3rd party dealer (one that may have serviced the car, but isn't the one selling it) isn't under any obligation to provide a service record to someone who doesn't own the car. The dealer who is actually selling the car must do full disclosure of what 'they' have...

 

Absolutely, the third party dealer has no obligation. But here the "third" party is a sister dealership of the one I'm buying from and they''re telling me they don't have access to the records. I understand that they may not have the records readily available but I want more information on the car which has been lying unsold for over 4 months. I was going to make a trip over to check it out today but I'm holding off for now, they are located pretty far from where I am and there's no point flying out there if I'm not reasonably sure of buying this.

Reading some of the things on here and elsewhere has made me very untrusting of dealers who are not completely forthright. What would you guys recommend doing in a situation like this?

 

I'd make knowing the service history a conditon of sale so you know what you're getting into. If they want to sell the car to an interested party .... And assuming they've nothing to hide, as you can easily infer they have if they're reluctant to reveal the past history.

 

This car is no different than buying any other used car... Check it out, test drive it, and have a 3rd party inspection done on it. Cars like the F-Type don't move very fast so a used car sitting on a lot for 4 months is really nothing especially in an area were it won't be a year round vehicle.

Have you done a Carfax report on it? A lot of times you'll also see the service history in the Carfax report. Granted, it subject to whatever the service location logs, but you'll get an idea of how many places and times it's been serviced.

IMO, given you'll have until 2022 left on the warranty, you are making a mountain out of a mole hill.

 

It is possible I am, however this car is in SoCal and priced much lower than other V6Ss on sale. Granted the price was significantly higher and has dropped slowly over the four months it has been unsold. I did check the Carfax which shows it was sold and serviced at a dealer which is a sister dealership of this one and there is nothing suspicious on the carfax history. I shall see if the dealer responds and take it from there.

 

I recall my inspection sheet said the same 6 mm minimum too. I interpreted that as there is at least 6mm and not that 6mm is when it needs replaced. as Oz said that is plenty of life left