People ask me all the time for the secret to buying super-cheap cars. My answer is always the same: Stop caring about mileage. I’m a huge advocate for buying cars with lots of miles. Provided they’re taken care of, that number on the dash really isn’t anything to worry about. Sure, mileage is a good indicator of general wear and tear, but it’s maintenance records and prior ownership that matter far more.
While that sentiment works for most cars, there are edge cases. This Lamborghini Aventador SVJ for sale in Florida is a great example. With over 87,000 miles on the clock, it is the highest-mileage Lamborghini of any kind for sale in America right now, aside from a couple of well-used Urus SUVs. Because of that, it is also by far the cheapest SVJ available in the country, priced at $500,000—over $100,000 lower than the next cheapest example.
For a clean-title, running, driving, Aventador SVJ, that’s a screaming deal (as far as ultra-exclusive exotics are concerned, anyway). If you don’t care about miles, it’s a far more accessible way to get into a highly desirable exotic without paying normal market pricing. In this case, though, the way this car was treated under prior ownership is likely another reason the car is priced the way it is. At least there’s an interesting story behind it.
The Legend Behind The Miles
Before I spotted this Aventador SVJ for sale, a friend alerted me to its existence through TikTok, where user buywithgus was showing the car listed on a dealer auction website, clicking through the listing photos. Ladies and gentlemen, this car was rough. Take a look for yourself in the video below:
@buywithgus Guess how much this 90,000 mile SVJ sold for at auction⁉️⁉️ #svj #lamborghini #auction #exoticcars ♬ original sound – buywithgus
The car wasn’t crashed—at least, it looked like it hadn’t been crashed recently—but it did not look great. There was duct tape holding the splitter up and holding the left side of the bumper to the car. There were also some deep scratches on the bumper and along each corner, some extreme pitting in the headlight lenses, and peeling paint on the roof.
The interior wasn’t much better. The seats and the steering wheel were covered in stains, and there looked to be a literal pile of trash in the passenger seat. The driver’s side floorboard, which is a piece of carbon fiber covered in adhesive-patterned material, was peeling badly.
Regardless of miles, it’s rare to see a car this valuable be treated so poorly. Perhaps this is what most Aventador SVJs end up looking like at nearly 90,000 miles—it’s hard to say, considering this is probably the highest-mileage SVJ on the planet. Either way, I had to know more.
The Lambo’s CarFax wasn’t entirely helpful, as it didn’t list anything aside from a Montana registration for the first 40,000 miles of its life. An accident report on the CarFax in 2022 reported damage to the front left corner of the car, which coincides with the bumper tape. If you’re thinking that tape might have had to do with a different crash, it doesn’t. More on that in a second.
A maintenance inspection in Las Vegas led me to believe this might’ve been a rental car, but I quickly dismissed that possibility, since rental companies like to keep their cars looking like new to keep customers happy. And this car was most certainly not looking like new. Digging into the comment section of that TikTok, I discovered the person who put all the miles on this car was a private owner named Mike.
According to the comments, Mike would reportedly take this Aventador out on road trips and road rallies similar to the Gumball 3000, where owners of exotic cars would plaster their vehicles with flashy stickers and drive huge distances across the country. That explains the mileage, but it doesn’t explain the unrepaired damage.
The video above, published two years ago by the AllAboutCars&More YouTube channel, shows the car sporting the duct tape, as well as a bunch of stickers for FuelRun, another high-end road rally event. More importantly, there’s a section of the video where Mike appears and says that it had 69,000 miles on the clock at the time. He goes on to reveal that he didn’t get the car repaired because he was in the middle of a divorce, and he “needed the insurance money to live.”
Fast-forward to the present day, and the car is sold at auction—it’s unclear why Mike got rid of it—with the damage still present. After its sale, it ends up at a dealer called Carrio Motorcars in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, mostly fixed up.
It Looks Pretty Good, All Things Considered
Looking at the photos of this Aventador published to TrueCar, you’d never know the damage that the car had to live with for years. The bumpers look new, there are no scratches on the paint, and there’s no duct tape anywhere along the exterior. The cabin has been cleaned up nicely and looks no worse off than an Aventador with a quarter of the miles on the clock. The only giveaway that this is even the same car is the VIN and the missing pieces of adhesive pattern from the floorboard.
I reached out to the dealership to ask about what exactly they fixed, though the person who had the work done wasn’t immediately available. The representative told me it was “a lot of exterior cosmetic stuff,” which makes sense, considering the difference in the car’s appearance from that auction lot to now. They wouldn’t share how much they spent on the fixes, but seeing as how a new front bumper cover costs just shy of 10 grand, I’m sure the repairs weren’t cheap.
Appearances aside, I also asked about how the car drove, since I was curious about how such an exotic car with so many miles has held up (87,000 miles in a Lamborghini is a lot different than 87,000 miles in a Toyota Camry). The rep told me it drove well and didn’t have any problems. These are all typical dealership responses, of course, so best to take them with a grain of salt. I wouldn’t be surprised if it drove just fine—while the CarFax has barely any service history, it’s possible Mike took care of this car mechanically, and simply neglected the aesthetics.
That’s an approach I can respect, especially since he didn’t keep this thing crammed into a climate-controlled garage its whole life. I hope whoever buys this car will drive it as much as he did.
Top graphic image: TrueCar and AllaboutCars&More/YouTube
“he was in the middle of a divorce”
Did the cross-country coke and hooker road trips in the Lambo have anything to do with that?
This warms my heart way more than reading about a 17 mile garage queen.
Beater, regular cars are bad enough but a beater/polished-up supercar? Yikes!
My fake supercar money is spending a bit more for a better, well cared for version.
A couple of years ago I rolled with this guy up to the big San Luis Obispo Audi meet that happens there every year. All I remember is that he chain-smoked cigars while driving the car, and he got walked by a tuned RS3 on the drive up. 😀
With who, this guy Mike that treats cars so badly? What’s his problem?
I feel like that $100K saved will evaporate in a nanosecond once the thing goes even slightly wrong. Which it will, early and often.
Nope, buy the best or don’t bother with this sort of thing. Unless you have a YouTube channel, of course. Ed Bolian will probably be all over this turd.
“Ed Bolian will probably be all over this turd.” Hopefully he will make a video about it and I can watch it when I have a hard time falling to sleep.
It’s not a good deal, though.
If you can legitimately afford $500K, you can afford $600K. Which means you can get a better example.
If $500K is your limit, you’re likely going to spend half that on a different exotic and still enjoy the same wow-factor from envious on-lookers.
This isn’t enough of a haircut over a clean version to make any sense for a personal car.
That said, it looks like it already found its new purpose in life. For some goofy YouTuber to buy it, make several clickbait videos about how they bought “the highest-mileage Lambo for sale” and for you to marvel at the quotes to fix/maintain everything on it. They collect $100K in ad revenue and fix nothing, then sell it for $485K in six months.
Spot on and big on the goofy YouTuber.
I am shocked – SHOCKED – that a guy like that, driving a car like this in douchey exoticar “road rallies” got divorced.
I have spent some time with the people who do these rallies. Some of them are cool, but many more are shouty, self-made types with all the dimensional depth of tissue paper.
I guess they theoretically exist, but I just can’t picture the person who buys a 500K car but 600K is out of their budget.
Especially one that’s just been flipped. It’s currently about as nice as it’s ever gonna be. It’s not like you’re buying cheap and planning to fix it up.
Tfw shitlord youtuber is the hero of a story for actually driving a car
I voted for the Sentra.
Pretty sure that’s a Lambo, dude!
Am I the only one that saw some scratches and a bit of trash in the passenger seat? The splitter is a bit different but still overall a minor part of the car. If this guy is doing road rallies (we’ve had a few pass through Dayton) it’s going to get some wear.
If the mechanicals are good and he followed routine stuff like fluid changes, I don’t see the big deal.
No, since the author points out: “here were also some deep scratches on the bumper and along each corner, some extreme pitting in the headlight lenses, and peeling paint on the roof…The interior wasn’t much better. The seats and the steering wheel were covered in stains, and there looked to be a literal pile of trash in the passenger seat.”
Mike looks exactly like I thought he would. Anyway, good for him and the car, honestly. The vast majority of exotics barely get driven, if they get driven at all. This one spent its entire life being driven as god intended and I’ll bet Mike has more than a few stories about the hijinks he got into with it. I’d much rather read stories like this than ones about how some billionaire freak is selling their entire collection of 15 matching McLarens or whatever.
After reading your comment I watched the clip with him in it, and idk how charitable I’m feeling toward the guy once he said he “owns a business that owns over 27 cars and equipment, and dodges taxes. Legally.”
This guy was up to his eyelids in tax evasion, and based on the condition of the car and it being in an auction instead of a private sale the tax man finally caught up to him and seized it.
You know what? Fair enough, I didn’t have time to watch more than a snippet. I’m still happy the Aventador got driven as god intended, though.
“owns a business that owns over 27 cars and equipment, and dodges taxes. Legally.”
Most likely what’s happening there is the vehicles and equipment are owned by the business. And thus, the expenses related to the vehicles and business get deducted against the business income.
And if I’m right about that, I wouldn’t call that ‘dodging taxes’. It’s just the regular way a business is run.
“Dodging taxes” were his words, not mine. The way he brags about it makes me think it wasn’t exactly above-board and he thought he was outsmarting the system.
Even then, I’m not necessarily saying what the guy was doing was illegal (although the evidence that seems to point to it being seized and auctioned off might be), I’m just pointing out that he doesn’t seem to be the most standup guy. In my view, there’s still a big gap between the “regular” way businesses are run and the ethical way businesses should be run.
This story even has a fun tie-in to the story on Montana registration tax evasion since as mentioned in the article this was registered there. Makes you wonder how much legitimate business activity this SVJ was doing in Montana.
As someone who has a high mileage exotic, it is important that potential buyers understand the impact that mileage has on the value of the car and the size of pool of buyers, especially if they are not planning to have the car long term.
The pool of buyers for exotics is small, and sadly, while we love them for the cars they are, many use them as investments (model dependent). Additionally, the people with that type of cash to drop on a car, are not going to want to deal with repairs and restorations, which leaves a lot of tire kickers with not enough money.
Its something that I dont think i realized /understood/ appreciated when I bought mine. Luckily, i got mine for a steal, but now 5 years later and toying woth the idea of selling it, i am starting to understand the value impact. That being said, there’s a right price for everything. Buy smart and drive your exotic!
Hmmm. The car showing up in a dealer auction full of trash and with such easily repairable cosmetic damage makes me think this guy didn’t give the car up by choice. It kinda seems like either a repo or police seizure situation. Maybe he was enjoying the speed during one of those rallies a bit too much and got picked up.
Depending on the timeline, this could’ve been a result from the new-ish Florida Super Speeder law that has harsh consequences for driving over 100 mph.
Probably very easy to do in such a car.
Well, after watching the video where “Mike” shows up I think I found the answer. He says he “owns a business that owns over 27 cars and equipment, and dodges taxes. Legally.”
Uh huh, sure buddy. I’m gonna guess this was a seizure over tax evasion.
Have to disagree on the high mileage assertion of the author-every time I buy what seems like a clean well maintained high mileage car I’ve wound up questioning the decision or outright regretting it. It’s really hard to reset the clock on all that hidden wear and tear, random suspension bushings, squeaks and rattles, transmissions going out that can happen even on a really well maintained car.
Car service isn’t ever good enough to trump usage. Sure, there’s lycoming O-360s out there with 6000+ hrs and still great… but A+P overhaul is the standard needed to have maintenance trump total miles/hours.
It CAN be done – but you end up with a car with records and amounts spent on it that look like airplane logbooks. But cars generally live in much harsher environments than airplanes which REALLY takes a toll on the cosmetics, no matter how well the mechanicals are maintained.
This. And ditto.
As I said before – for anything that is supposed to be nice, and not a beater, buy the best or don’t bother. You can almost never make an average one nice for what a nice one costs, and it doesn’t really matter what brand it is or how much talent you have for DIY, even with your time valued at $0/hr.
Yeh 100% especially things like interior parts, seats, and paint are very hard and/or expensive to replace with new or even good used.
To your point, I was low key restoring a running and driving ’83 533i the last few years and while I knew it was sort of a pile of deferred maintenance and small repairs when I bought it, it was still plenty of fun to drive and enough of a 10 footer after I repainted the hood to not be embarrassed driving it (and get compliments constantly). But ultimately when I totaled everything up that I would I want with it I was at the price clean low mileage examples are selling for.
Exactly. BTDT enough times to learn the lesson. But that said, if all you can afford is the installment plan, even if it costs more in the end you can have some fun along the way. But it still will never be as good as if you bought a nice one up front and kept it that way.
Meanwhile, in my personal experience at the bottom of the market, the unusually low mileage cars have been the most unreliable.
I can totally see that too, I mean cars that have been sitting barely used for years can have their own weird problems.
Not sure what the sweet spot is, based on my experience working at a camera repair shop for awhile the old film cameras that aged the best had consistent light use as well as being treated with care. I tend to think this is true for cars but it’s hard for me to specifically say what that looks like. The other complication I’ve seen (at least on German cars) is that no matter how you take care of it when you start hitting around 80-110K major maintenance is going to be required on suspension parts and often cooling system components.
So what? Maintenance is maintenance. You do it all at once, get it over with, then enjoy the thing for a whole bunch more miles. As the saying goes “buy once, cry once”. Still far cheaper than buying new ones.
There is a happy medium between sitting unused and being used that “just right” amount. I find a consistent 2-5K a year is that happy medium. But even then – I would infinitely rather deal with the issues that result from too little use to too much use – they are inevitably cheaper.
Good job Mike.
Eh, good on him for actually driving a car like this, but based on that brief video, this guy is pretty sketchy.
There is nothing wrong with that 🙂
At least the car was driven and driven as intended 😀