Originally Posted by Jim B.

Hello. R. Chase in Atlanta, I apologise in advance if I misapprehended your remarks, but I really don't think I did.

I like the people around here, but I am going to go out on a limb here and violently disagree with you here, I feel you called this one totally wrong here, so I am calling you to task on this one.

It is so easy and glib for you to simply say all you can do is to be aware of which cars are good and bad and avoid the bad cars. That's only *half* the story. You can parse out which cars are the good models to buy, and two identical models could look the same, and one is a gem and one might be junk Your job would be to use anything you could, to your advantage, to figure out which one of the two to choose.

So, when buying a car PRIVATELY, an intelligent view of the situation, may give lots of clues to the car's worth. Even looking at the seller's house, his clothes, his other vehicles, can give valuable clues about his car he is selling. Is he sloppy, his grass unmowed, other cars dirty, house untidy and a mess, with newspapers around everywhere, old tools and junk scattered around the garage, burnt out bedsprings on the lawn, then chances are good that he had neglected the car he is trying to sell you, too.

This kind of observation, obviously, is usually impossible when buying from a dealer or auction (NOT always, though), as the prior service records are usually gone or not available and you can't interview the Prior owner at the dealer. Always the dealer tries to protect the privacy (supposedly) of the previous owner of the car by removing any paperwork with their name on it and never letting the customer see the name and address on the title, even afgter the car is sold, that is why the dealer charges you $50 title and transfer fee, they send the paperwork to the DMV.. It can be hard for the determined and buyer determined to be informed about the car. But the best evidence of the car's care can be found by talking to the owner who had it and looking at the documents which proved the necessary service and repairs had been done timely(of course not with DIY owners, a pretty rare breed)

As a used car purchaser, many times I have gone to the extent, in pursuit of this information, to call up or visit the garages who stamped the record maintenance booklets, in the car, and talked to them about the car, I have asked police dept friends to run title/license checks on the car I liked, but saw at the dealer, and then wrote to the old owner of the car with some money inside the letter as incentive, and asked them to phone me to talk about the car they'd sold or traded to the dealer, and EVERY time, they called me and I got valuable information, service records, and once even touch up paint and extra keys from them. Most prior owners aren't really so paranoid about privacy, despite what you or the dealers would have us believe.. This helped me be a calm and satisfied buyer, with service history reconstructed many times on used cars, sometimes all the way back to mile zero and Predelivery inspection, so you need to be resourceful and a bit bold. The rewards could be rich and productive (yet you dismiss them as silly paperwork not worth chasing)

It worked, to reconstruct maintenance history to day one in some cases, and was verfy helpful in predicting future repair expenses and what service needed to be done when.....

Engineering, design changes, and design changes in production run can be predictors of reliability and durability in the future, and are nice to know, but it is only HALF the story.

Your mention of discovery issues and lawsuits suggest some familiarity with legal conflicts, and if that be so, I respectfully suggest you may want to realign your thinking about what really constitutes an invasion of privacy in this kind of situation, buyinjg a used car and merely seeking out the history of the vehicle. Carfax can only do a certain limited job....

You are giving MANIFESTLY BAD ADVICE HERE if you are saying that "tire kicking and half'a$$ed logic" is applied to car purchases by clueless buyers who are trying to figure out the prior history and maintenance paper trail of the car.

Physical condition of the car counts a lot, and the car should be inspected to be sure it is in good physical condition, not a rust bucket, refugee from a freeway pile up, and that all systems and mechanical parts work as they should, that's the purpose of a prepurchase inspection.

However, for you to so cavalierly dismiss a buyer's efforts to find out the prior owners of the car, and service history documentation, flies in the face of widely accepted and logically sound advice to car purchasers. Knowing this information can provide a gold mine of sound and excellent information to prospective buyers, and getting it could actually increase the value of the car onm subsequent resale. Getting all the information you can is not a waste of time, it's vital, even critically so with the high line luxury cars, all the experts always say "service history is critical, get all you can, never buy without"

For you to suggest anything otherwise, is doing buyers a grave disservice.

You are UTTERLY, AND FLAT OUT W R O N G !!!

You want to buy a car your way, fine, and the best of LUCK to you - because you will really need it.

But don't try and peddle it here, it's *really* bad advice!