When buying or selling a used car, having maintenance records is supremely important. It gives prospective buyers peace of mind knowing the car they’re about to purchase has been taken care of, and gives sellers the edge in price negotiations, because they can prove the car isn’t a huge hunk of neglected junk.
Of course, everyone is different when it comes to caring about maintenance. There are people in my life who won’t buy anything without seeing a thick stack of service records in the glovebox, even if the car looks and drives like new. At the same time, some people couldn’t care less about a bunch of fancy-looking documents accompanying the car, and assess it purely on how it runs and drives in the moment.
Most people, I assume, lie somewhere in between. Maintenance records certainly matter, but how much do they matter? Your bar for missing maintenance or repair items might be a lot higher if, say, you were a mechanic who planned to work on your own car than, say, a mom of three who just wants to make sure you have something reliable to get from A to B.
That leads me to today’s question:
What’s The Least Amount Of Maintenance History You’d Be Okay With When Buying a Used Car?
For me, it really all depends. When I think about buying a car, I consider it a big balancing act. If I’m paying a bunch of money, I want to know it’s been taken care of, so I’d expect at least some maintenance history, with the seller having addressed any major problems (or adjusted their price to reflect they haven’t addressed said problems).
On the other hand, if I’m paying $2,500 beater, it’s not reasonable to expect the seller to have a binder full of maintenance records going back to when the car was new. Usually, when I’m buying something that cheap, I don’t even ask about maintenance records—I usually just judge the car on vibes alone.
Where it gets murkier is in the middle. Let’s say I come across a car that’s sort of a good deal, but not a great deal. This is when maintenance records might actually sway my decision to buy a car. From there, it varies from car to car, depending on whether the car I’m buying has some catastrophic problem that, if left unaddressed, will cause some major damage (rod bearings for the E90-generation BMW M3 or the IMS bearing for 986-generation Porsche Boxster come to mind as widely known examples of this).
I want to know your thoughts. What’s the least amount of maintenance history you’d be willing to accept when buying a used car?
Top graphic image: Brian Silvestro
It would depend on the car. If it were a car which had known, foreseeable reliability issues (think 1990’s BMW cooling systems), then I’d need to see something indicating that the appropriate maintenance had been performed recently or I’d expect a very good price on the car. If I’m buying a Honda or Toyota with <200K miles on it, then i wouldn’t really care much about maintenance records. Either way, there would be a pre-purchase inspection involved.
I went into buying a Honda expecting the pyridine of reliability, getting a nice clean southern owned 1 owner 8th gen Civic Si. I was used to the worked of 90s BMWs so I figured the Honda would be amazing. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The Honda has nicked and dimed me to death with electrical issues and mechanical problems. Parts are hard to source and there is very little info on them. The BMWs on the other hand have a few well known problems, primarily cooling systems and suspension bushings, are well documented and have awesome parts availability from dozens of competing vendors. The build quality was the biggest shock, that Honda is just cheap, it makes 90s GM products look like quality.
I’m sure there are good Hondas out there, as there has to be a reason they enjoy such a good reputation, I didn’t manage to pick out in that regard.
On a similar front, I have two friends with 80s Toyotas, an MR2 and a Supra. Toyota basically doesn’t support those cars any more so you are bound to the used parts market and small aftermarket.
None, I guess? I’ve never bought a car with any records, so yeah
None records. That’s the minimum.
I don’t trust anyone trying to sell me something enough to take their “records” at face value, therefore they are useless to me, therefore there is no difference between heaps of records and none records.
Caveat emptor. I’m the emptor, and placing any value on anyone’s records is not caveating.
I’ve heard about this maintenance record thing. I even was shocked when I bought a house once where they kept a log of all their utilities.
But, no. I don’t care, and I don’t keep them myself.
I don’t really care. Maybe I buy a Ukrainian carfax and look at it for maintenance a bit but still not a huge concern. The majority of people I’ve run into selling used cars might have shoved a bunch of receipts in the glove box. I tend to do that for my tires for the road hazard too. I guess if you are buying something truly special from someone that really took care of it they probably have a folder or a binder. I’ve seen many times where someone was billed for something at a dealer and the work was never done. So in that sense everyone is buying a false sense of security. And most people out there really wouldn’t know if a dealer or shop didn’t do what they said they did alot of blind trust going on and big time scams.
If it’s a German Luxury Depreciation – and it’s CPO – I don’t need any documentation.
But if it’s not CPO – I need it all.
If it’s an EV, I don’t need anything.
However if it’s a British Luxury Depreciation – no amount of maintenance will save me.
Buy a new car, drive it >10-years, trade it in, and repeat again in 10 years.
Maybe it’s more effective to buy a used car and keep it running, but this is insurance for mobility.
I once bought a BMW E30, like the one in the lead image, at night, on an unlit trading estate, in the rain. It had no service history at all. It was only the next morning I realised it was half pink from filler.
It only cost £50, so I couldn’t lose.
After I repainted it, badly, matte black I got an email from HR telling me to remove my abandoned car from the works car park. It wasn’t abandoned, it just looked like it.
Uh, getting service history info is a thing? Really?
So we are all out here just buying shitboxes based on vibes alone?
Not at all! I like to think my personal automotive standards are much lower than that.
My fatal flaw is finding a bunch of minor to moderate issues on the test drive and then thinking “I can fix that” to every single one. Then ending up with a car that needs a few months worth of sorting before it is even close to what I wanted.
In my experience, problematic test drives can be avoided by purchasing non-running vehicles, preferably sight-unseen.
What sealed the deal for me when I bought my E34 535i was that the radiator exploded on the test drive, and I knew I could fix it for way less than the discount I was about to get.
Pretty much so for me at least. Though when I’ve bought ex-fleet vehicles from my state the records are available online for most of their vehicles so I certainly look at that to help find the best ones to bid on.
all i can say is we’ve all made some bad decisions before
Zero.
But I have yet to break the $10K on buying a used car, so there’s that.
I don’t obsessively keep a paper trail of the oil changes, etc. I do for my cars, but when I resell a car, it’s usually for 3 figures.
If for some reason I ever decided to buy say a Boxster, I’d want to know if the IMS problem had been dealt with (by owner or by virtue of model year). But that’s not likely to happen any time soon, if ever.
I’ll accept a token, verbal “A/C just needs a recharge” and “just needs an o2 sensor” and be on my way with this year’s new shitbox.
Zero. In the modern age of not needing to rebuild the whole motor every 50,000 miles it’s meaningless.
I bought a Sterling 825 from Craigslist, sight unseen. It lived a sketchy neighborhood in a small town in Idaho. My friend and I proceeded to drive it from Idaho to Rhode Island with absolutely zero known history, other than at least 8 packs of cigarette butts strewn about the interior.
I buy cars where the fuel level is a material concern in the value of the vehicle, so it doesn’t really bother me.
Buy this 18 gallons of gas and I’ll throw in a self-propelled (mostly) storage can.
I bought an accident-repaired FiST on eBay. So. . . zero?
Hell yea. How’s it treating you? What color? I’ve never seen another blue FiST like mine in person and starting to feel like the only one.
Kona blue 2016. Had it nearly 2 years now. It’s awesome. No real trouble, I’ve done a few improvements on the speakers and sound insulation, and an intercooler and AP. It’s got a water intrusion issue that I think I have to drop the headliner to investigate, but I drilled drain holes in the spare tire well and park it with the nose pointed uphill for now, lol.
Never seen the Kona Blue in person; didn’t even know it was an option! I’ve got the performance blue.
I also have the water intrusion that ends up in the spare tire well I can’t figure out. My interior is almost completely removed in the back trying to trace it.
It’s not as nice as performance blue imo, but it does sparkle nicely in the sun. I’m pretty sure my water issue is the tray under the sunroof is dislodged. It will tilt open but not slide. I have the recaro seats and they are tight. I wanted skittle orange or green but as long as I didn’t have to get white, silver, grey or black, I was super happy.
I don’t have a sunroof but still have the same intrusion issue so could be something else.
I bought mine brand new and within the first 15 minutes of the ride home I had the thought that the Recaro’s might have been a mistake. You definitely get used to them, but I always feel I have to apologize in advance to any wider passengers before we even get in the car.
I had the choice between the green and performance blue, but I said hell no on the green because I love blue and the green had the sunroof. I got every option but the sunroof to avoid leaks. Didn’t work out for me lol
It absolutely depends on the price and the brand. But I have bought cars with literally none and gotten years of trouble free motoring out of them.
I’m okay with no maintenance history. I can look around and inspect things and get a good idea of what I’m up against within a few minutes, and if things feel funny I have an odbii reader I can plug in on the fly to get a reading for issues.
Seems I’m not alone, I’ve never gotten anything more than a verbal description on what’s (claimed to) been done, not like I’d expect dealer records on a 10-20 year old car
I’ve gotten cars with extensive service histories and some with none. They’ve all been fine. I think generally you can tell if a car has been neglected with a good inspection. My 06 Miata came from a used car dealer with no service records, but you could tell it had been well kept by the condition of the interior and exterior. It’s been just fine. Our 16 Miata had a 3″ stack of maintenance as well as dates written in the engine bay on when things had been serviced. It’s also been fine. One reason I like buying used EV’s and PHEV’s is, there’s very little service that has had to occur at the 3 year mark. My Volt, 330e, and Bolt EUV were all highly discounted used vehicles with no concern of service records. I always look at service history as a bonus, but also an indicator of what has gone wrong with the car. I’m more concerned with accident history and proper repair.
I have a car for sale, albeit a very nice and special car, with a very full history. The history files weigh more than the car! At least the buyer will know what they are about to launch toward.
I recently sold an apparently nice Austin mini rally car, smart thing, good Paddy Hopkirk replica. Records beautifully presented in bespoke leather bound files, the damn boxes are over £300. The box files were the only honest value in the thing.
When buying a Ferrari, pay for the history.
Also when buying anything over sixty years old, assume that it might not have a full history but ask. Sometimes someone whos dad owned it in 1949 still has a pile of paperwork. This one is really rather fun sometimes.
None actually: bought 3 used cars with zero provided service records and theyve been fine beyond obvious flaws that I saw before purchase. But on the otherhand I am not the type of person who buys suspiciously cheap vehicles to depend on or cars that love to live in the shop.
Although I do keep service records for the Fiata which have been oil changes and a windshield swap as of now. For the Vic, since all the work has been done myself, I do record what has been done and what parts were swapped in, what oil/filter was used, and so on.
Most of the time I don’t even want service records. Puts a complete dent in the whole “I got $2K, take it or leave it.” strategy.
I’m usually the 5th owner of any given vehicle. “Maintenance history” is summed up by the level of the fluids found in the vehicle at the time I am looking at it.
The kind of exception to that was buying my truck. I paid slightly over market for it when I bought it because it had a Jasper engine under warranty in it. The engine did blow a couple months later, and I was able to get a new Jasper with no issues. So that was worth it.