Mileage - How high is too high?

Howitzer

Hi there,

I'm flicking through the 2nd hand car sites looking for a cars up to €15k

How high is too high in terms of mileage for year 2000+ diesel / petrol engines (1.6L and above)?

I'm considering:
VW Golf
VW Polo
VW Bora
BMW 3 series (if the money will allow)

As a guess I am looking for something with 60,000 miles.
Should I not be frightened by 100,000 miles plus? There are a lot of good looking cars on the market with that mileage.

Any advice welcome.
Cheers

patrickc

it really depends on the car, the size of it how well it's been looked after service history etc.. in general diesels do more mileage than petrols.

Kojak

Howitzer wrote:

Hi there,

I'm flicking through the 2nd hand car sites looking for a cars up to €15k

How high is too high in terms of mileage for year 2000+ diesel / petrol engines (1.6L and above)?

I'm considering:
VW Golf
VW Polo
VW Bora
BMW 3 series (if the money will allow)

As a guess I am looking for something with 60,000 miles.
Should I not be frightened by 100,000 miles plus? There are a lot of good looking cars on the market with that mileage.

Any advice welcome.
Cheers

If I was you, OP, I would be more concerned about the condition of the car, how she handles etc. rather than the miles up on the clock.

If it was a 04 or 05, for example, and there was 100K+ up on it then I wouldn't go near it as it probably got very tough driving for only a short space of time.

As for the age of the care you are intending to buy, from my experience if it was anything around 70 to 80K miles up, then it should be OK. I'm going on the idea that it got, on average, 10,000 miles drining a year.

However, I will say again that the cars condition is more important than miles on the clock IMO.

cantdecide

just come back whenever you find some cars you could really consider. i'd recommend 3 series if you can swing it. pro rata, they're much better value than a golf IMO.

this 3 series will always be a desirable car and saleable. if you aren't doing crazy miles it will be easily disposed of in 2 years. if you are doing high miles, you could keep it for 4/5 years and get the value out of it that way. take every case on it's merits.

this looks like a nice one

http://www.usedcars.ie/usedcars/index.cfm?fuseaction=car&carID=553783

maidhc

Howitzer wrote:

As a guess I am looking for something with 60,000 miles.
Should I not be frightened by 100,000 miles plus? There are a lot of good looking cars on the market with that mileage.

If I am buying s/h 60k miles is normally as far as I am happy to go. It means I have ~100k of driving before serious repairs are needed.

Obviously the service history and general condition of the car is of more relevance than the miles on the odometer though.

tenchi-fan

maidhc wrote:

If I am buying s/h 60k miles is normally as far as I am happy to go. It means I have ~100k of driving before serious repairs are needed.

Obviously the service history and general condition of the car is of more relevance than the miles on the odometer though.

My brother and I both bought Audi A4's, same year both with around 110,000 miles. His was a red 1.9l turbo-diesel with alloy wheels, sunroof and generally sporty looking, mine was 1.6l petrol. His broke down after a week and needed to be towed off the motorway, needed a new (reconditioned) engine and timing belt and a lot more work done, it also had an oil leak and diesel leak. Mine's been going fine (touch wood) although I gather the timing belt change is overdue. It just depends on the previous owner and how they treated the car, I can only imagine the previous owner of the audi drove the living daylights out of it. A neighbour of mine was saying he met some one with a Toyota that had more than 300,000 miles on the clock and was still going!

daedalus2097

That's it, it's all to do with how it's been looked after. Regularly serviced cars will have no problems at 100k, but a car with 50k on the clock that hasn't been serviced is asking for trouble. Did a 1 week, 5000 mile rally around Europe last year in a 1990 Jetta 1.6 turbo diesel with about 250,000 miles on the clock. Very regularly serviced, had some new suspension parts and a new radiator before we set off, but that was it. Not a bother on it!

maidhc

The mileage old diesels could do is largely irrelevant. The common rail diesels are a completely different kettle of fish, and are unlikely to last as long.

ptownmarc

On average a car should do between 8 and 10 thousand miles a year. u only wanta car that was used for recreational purposes. anything less in milage is great. but again it also depends on the car u want. if its jap ure fine anything else beware,

old boy

got almost 267,000 on the clock of my 89 spacewagon and its perfect,( i think so any way)