Buying a car (low km) with no service history

[ebxr8240]

Check oil colour and carbon build up in rocker cover if you can see through filler ? Just listening to engine on start up especially from cold tells its condition ..
Some of our fleet vehicles are driven by heaps of different people with low klm ..
Yet the high klm are often driven by one person and possibly looked after ?
So mileage doesn't always say it's condition ...

[xisled]

Originally Posted by Dave1965

I have similar issue to the original poster, Looking at a very low km Ba GT , all the rta and other checks are good , the car itself is immaculate , yet to drive it but that will happen, Owner tells me the last service the dealer didnt return the service book, turns out that dealership relocated between then and now and they dont have the book, Dealer informs me and emails me service record for last 5 years and original Dealer who sold the car has record for the fist 14 months , so there is 5 years missing, Car only has 42,000 km now ,
So im not really sure , I suspect that for an investment car most who would want to purchase it down the track would want to see this history , Any comments ????????

Don't buy and FPV as an investment, that is my advice.

[FGX335]

I always look at the books, it's good to see some history, especially if from Ford dealerships.

However, I don't rely on it as gospel, and it all fits together to form a 'feeling' about the car. It's not essential, but it does help to see where the car has been and how often the services were done. Yes, these can be faked, so take them for what they are - an indicator of the car's history (potentially). Most of these will be correct, but you'll always have someone trying to do the dodgy, and you need your BS radar for those times.

[sprintman1]

Spent time as a mechanic and service our vehicles more than 'book'. Service books haven't been updated since purchase

[xr6tjet]

Depending on the car the cluster could have been swapped out to show lower kilometers, I have seen falcons in the past where the car had said low kms on the odo but the car looked like they have done 400,000 + kms. Books I would always personally prefer to see whether it all matches up. But you can usually tell if the car is low mileage and has been taken care of. In saying that, I purchased my XE with low mileage and no books. When you look through the car is fairly obvious it hasn't done much kms.