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Would you buy this car?

Passion, instruction, buying, care, maintenance and more, any form of vehicle discussion is welcome here
Maylix
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Would you buy this car?

#452923

Postby Maylix » October 25th, 2021, 1:44 pm

A relative of mine is thinking of buying a second hand car (Nissan Juke as it happens). It's a June 2013 first reg, 2 previous owners and 10,800 miles on the clock. Seems incredibly low, but I guess it can happen. Anyway she asked my advice and I looked up the MOT history on the gov website. Here are the recorded details:
Date tested Mileage
1 June 2021 10,473 miles

3 June 2020 9,636 miles

13 June 2019 8,994 miles

12 June 2018 8,325 miles

22 June 2017 14,274 miles

28 June 2016 5,531 miles

Anybody any ideas as to what might have happened here?
TIA
Maylix

pje16
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Re: Would you buy this car?

#452928

Postby pje16 » October 25th, 2021, 1:52 pm

This sounds really odd
If someone is going to "clock" the mileage it is normally beacuse it is very high eg 100,000 plus

This site gives some reasons, but most of them are rare in terms of likelihood
https://www.odosolutions.biz/pages/reas ... correction

Mike4
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Re: Would you buy this car?

#452930

Postby Mike4 » October 25th, 2021, 1:55 pm

Well my first thought is the 22 June 2017 entry the tester just got the mileage wrong.

Less likely would be the owner at the time knew they were doing a lot of miles and bought a new speedo for it, re-starting at zero.

Is it a mechanical odometer or an electronic display? On reflection my older vehicle is electronic and I'd have thought the manus would have made fiddling them near impossible nowadays. But an acquaintance of mine who used to run a Jaguar garage says otherwise. Not sure I believe him.

That wasn't much help, was it?!


(Spilling edit.)

bluedonkey
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Re: Would you buy this car?

#452936

Postby bluedonkey » October 25th, 2021, 2:17 pm

Guy in the garage was doing more than one MOT at a time, and got two cars mixed up.

AsleepInYorkshire
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Re: Would you buy this car?

#452938

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » October 25th, 2021, 2:35 pm

Maylix wrote:A relative of mine is thinking of buying a second hand car (Nissan Juke as it happens). It's a June 2013 first reg, 2 previous owners and 10,800 miles on the clock. Seems incredibly low, but I guess it can happen. Anyway she asked my advice and I looked up the MOT history on the gov website. Here are the recorded details:
Date tested Mileage
1 June 2021 10,473 miles

3 June 2020 9,636 miles

13 June 2019 8,994 miles

12 June 2018 8,325 miles

22 June 2017 14,274 miles

28 June 2016 5,531 miles

Anybody any ideas as to what might have happened here?
TIA
Maylix

It's been clocked between 2016 & 2017 and been clocked on continuous years too. A car that's doing 10-20 miles a week? Is the owner a millionaire who uses it once a week to visit his mistress ;)

If you can't explain it I'd walk around it and tell your friend to look elsewhere

It's not a mistake in my opinion. Look at the interior foot pedals, steering wheel and gear knob for signs of wear that would exceed this sort of use. I suspect the engine compartment should look amazingly pristine too. It's also very possible it should have no wear to the tyres. Even though the tyres shouldn't have worn down with 10K mileage they should still have needed changing due to side wall degradation caused by solar gain (not sure if that applies to a vehicle that has been in a dark garage when not used.)

AiY

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Re: Would you buy this car?

#452946

Postby redsturgeon » October 25th, 2021, 3:00 pm

Looks like a mistake to me.

What engine is it. If diesel then I wouldn't like the low miles...DPF problems?

John

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Re: Would you buy this car?

#452949

Postby bungeejumper » October 25th, 2021, 3:23 pm

I also reckon it's a mistake. Probably the testing station got two cars mixed up when it came to sorting out the paperwork. A bit weird that nobody has queried it.

My parents' 200 series Rover had barely 14,000 miles on it at nine years, when I sold it on their behalf. My mother was disabled, and my father did footlingly small mileages until we took the car keys away from him for everybody's safety. :( That happens. By that stage, the tyres were still okay, but one of the water hoses had sprung a leak.

Agree that the sharpest test of a car's true mileage is to examine the steering wheel and pedals for "inconsistent" wear. Are all the tyres the same? Would be a good sign.

I'd only add that my own negative experience with a tidy low-miler (15K @ seven years) could have been avoided if only I'd had the car comprehensively flushed out. (Oil, brakes, gearbox, but most of all the coolant). I'd been driving the car for six months when a lump of encrusted sediment suddenly came loose from the bottom of somewhere and blocked the water pump, with catastrophic consequences when it seized on the M4. :shock: It cost me a top end rebuild, head skim and new valves and all, but it was never the same again. Learn from my example. :|

BJ

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Re: Would you buy this car?

#452950

Postby didds » October 25th, 2021, 3:32 pm

shows how much the testers bother to reflect on the recorded mileage ...

monabri
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Re: Would you buy this car?

#452954

Postby monabri » October 25th, 2021, 3:40 pm

I did have one MOT where the tester recorded the mileage incorrectly (too high). The recorded mileage subsequently went down at the next MOT. Only happened the once.

edit: my car only did <500 miles since the last MOT ....10 miles per week on avg. I can assure all here that I have NOT clocked the car..most definitely NOT!

Maylix
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Re: Would you buy this car?

#452961

Postby Maylix » October 25th, 2021, 4:09 pm

Thanks everyone, so the consensus seems to be that it was a mistake and therefore nothing to worry about...and thanks to bungeejumper for the tip on flushing out; will pass that on to the prospective buyer.

Regards
Maylix

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Re: Would you buy this car?

#452992

Postby airbus330 » October 25th, 2021, 6:16 pm

I'd be super skeptical about 10k on an 8 year old car. It doesn't make it a no go, but you'd have to have a good idea why the mileage is so low (is it possible to contact the previous owner directly), even before the MOT discrepancy. I recently bought a 2010 Pug 207 with 22k on the clock. With sceptics hat on I looked at the interior (seat thigh supports, shoulder supports, sag. Shiney steering wheel, lettering/symbols on the stalks/gear stick) as well as the foot rubbers which are often replaced to cheaply disguise the miles. Then the service book and phoned the dealer to corroborate the service stamps. Then looked for the downsides of under use, corrosion, blocked drains etc. As it happens on the Pug it was all good and I bought it. ( I kicked myself that I failed to notice that the camchain replacement was missed on the service schedule at 10 years). The biggest give away though, was that the car felt virtually new when you got into it, everything just looked new and unworn. You can't fool the eye on this even with a very well prepared used car with 100k on it. All IMHO of course.

BTW I have an old motorcycle which has a faulty odometer, the MOT mileage has gone down for the last 2 years!

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Re: Would you buy this car?

#453166

Postby sg31 » October 26th, 2021, 11:38 am

My wifes car is low mileage, not as low as that but still low. It was originally bought by an old lady who used it to do 3 to 4,000 miles in it's first few years and then the use tailed off to a few hundred miles each year as she became less mobile. We bought it off the garage that had supplied the car as new and serviced it and MOT'd it. The services dropped to every 2 years in the later stages as the garage said it wasn't worth doing each year for a few hundred miles.

I checked the car over for signs of wear in the usual places, it all fitted the story so my wife bought it.

In the OP's case I'd be inclined to accept the situation and buy the car if everything else seems ok. I doubt someone clocking a car would reduce mileage to such a low level that it would raise questions.


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