Went to look at a 2001 XKR. First had dents (not small) and clear coat lifting that didn’t show in pics. No CEL but when hooked up my scanner P1000 code which shows seller cleared the codes. He said drives every day so not cleared from dead battery. After drove pending codes for O2 and EVAP. Exhaust tips not just black with carbon but actually oily. Dip stick oil looked brand new. When asked when changed seller said not recently.

 

When looking for used cars, you see a lot of turds before you see the right one.

 

And just remember - you can't polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter...

 

actually, the car the OP describes doesn’t sound that bad. Finding a perfect 20 year old car is not easy.

Some sellers are crooks, no doubt about it. But many just don’t know what they have.

Z

 

Link to the car? Depends on what he was asking, if it was really cheap then maybe he accounted for the issues. If he was asking top $ then good idea to move on. I do hate when people hide cosmetic issues in listings, drives me crazy and wastes both of our time.

 

no crooked sellers just idiot buyers....buyer beware the law says

 

No longer there. Guess sold.

 

Buyer beware or caveat emptor places the responsibility on the buyer to perform due diligence. Does not mean screwing a buyer is okay if the sale goes through. Again MIL not on, told me drives every day, P1000 code, drive for 2 minutes and have two pending codes. He probably cleared codes as soon as I left.

 

Where I live the seller (private or business seller) is liable if they sell a car with a known fault, so although caveat emptor still applies, so does caveat venditor.

 

Of course buyer beware applies and that's all well and good, but don't waste peoples time by hiding obvious issues before they make the trip to look at it. It's funny, the 2000 XKR I just purchased was one of those.

I typically only buy cars that are in pristine cosmetic condition (I hate doing body work, but don't mind mechanicals) and this car was a bit of a mess. I turned it down and went home but the seller contacted me a few days later and asked me to make an offer which I did, a pretty low one, and he unexpectedly accepted. The car has a lot of good things going for it, but needs a good amount of work to be up to my standards. Have been working on it for a couple weeks now and its almost ready for the road. Will never be a perfect car (which bothers me a bit), but it will be a very nice and well sorted driver. Hopefully that'll be my excuse to actually put some serious miles on it this summer.