Road Scholar: Used and abused

THE POTENTIAL PITFALLS OF BUYING A USED CAR IN LAS VEGAS

By Newt Briggs

I used to have a crafty neighbor--let's call him Al--who bought junked cars and resold them to unsuspecting locals at a tidy profit. He wasn't a car dealer per se; he just had that easygoing lack of scruples that's ideal for salespeople. He found the cars everywhere--auctions, salvage yards, roadside lots--and he'd drag them home and pay a mechanic, usually someone down on his luck, to work on them in his garage. The key, he always told me, was to shine up the engine with WD-40 before showing the car to potential buyers.

"People always equate looks with condition," Al would say--even when the crankcase was filled with sawdust and the muffler was hanging on by a rubber band.

Of course, running a car dealership out of your residence is not an easy task, but Al had the ins and outs down like a window shade in summer. For starters, he never let anyone come to the house. If they knew where he lived, they might come back with complaints, so he always made some excuse about being bad with directions and met his quarry in the parking lot of a local bank. Al also had four phone lines, which he changed on a regular basis. Not only did this make it possible for him to ditch his previous clientele, it also permitted him to advertise in the Review-Journal, which allows only three car sales from a specific phone number during each calendar year. To get past the pesky problem of identity, he dropped off his ad payments in person and made up a fictitious name and address.

Perhaps most important of all, Al was at least 70 years old, and people almost always took him for a rube. He played up this impression by dressing like a schlub and telling long-winded stories about his pets. Who cares that he didn't have the title in his name? How could a person so concerned about the physical and emotional well-being of his Labradoodle possibly be out to pillage anyone's wallet? How, indeed.

The point of the story is that it's not always easy to determine when you're getting a good deal and when you're getting good and screwed on a used car. You can open the hood, kick the body panels, jump on the bumper and scour for leaks, and you might still drag home a clunker that's going to cost you twice its value in monthly maintenance. That's a difficult pill to swallow--particularly in a town as car-dependent as our own.

So how does a person unlearned in the automotive trades avoid the proverbial used-car screw job? The condition of the interior is often a reliable indication of wear on the car, but a better one is the condition of the gas pedal. If it's cracked and worn down to the nub, it's a pretty sure sign that the engine is, too.

"Main thing on a used car is before you give the seller any cash, you have to take the car to a smog station and make him pay for your smog," says Mercury auto repair columnist Buffalo Jim Barrier. "Because once you buy that car, you're stuck. The seller is not liable for smog, and more often than not, junked cars won't pass. Then you're looking at anything from a ring job to a valve job to a simple tune-up. But still, what if it's a ring job? That's going to cost a small fortune."

Buffalo Jim also recommends bringing the car into a shop for a once-over by a seasoned mechanic. "The old neighborhood gas stations used to be good for that," he says. "But that was back when we used to call them service stations."

Sarah Lee Marks, corporate fleet and Internet sales manager for Integrity Chrysler Jeep Dodge, echoes Buffalo Jim's suggestions, estimating that a thorough vehicle inspection will cost from $50 to $150. "AAA has a list of reputable service stations and body shops that will evaluate your vehicle and tell you what it's going to need and if serious body work has been performed on it," Marks says. "That's the only way you're going to truly know what you're about to buy from the inside out." If the seller won't let you take the car to the mechanic of your choice, Marks says you should walk away from the deal--no matter how sweet the pot may get.

"You absolutely should have the right to do that," says Marks. "And if somebody says, `No, I'm uncomfortable with that," then say, `I'm uncomfortable buying your car, thank you very much.'"

Incidentally, as far as I know, Al still sells cars in the Las Vegas area. He tends to favor Japanese imports because they "give the appearance of reliability." So, as the saying may someday go, beware of senior citizens bearing too-good-to-be-true car deals; they are likely the product of subterfuge.