Thread: Car Talk
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Sauvblanc
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Mel-Bun!
 
2012-06-23, 23:08

Apologies for resurrecting an old-ish thread, and also whether this has already been discussed. Not sure I can bear to go through 37 pages of comments...

I was looking at a 2007 Subaru Forester yesterday. It was actually fun to drive (at least compared to the Honda CR-V I tried right afterwards). It's in my price range. The only thing that gives me pause is that it has nearly 200,000 km (~120K miles) on the odometer. Supposedly it's been well maintained (need to verify the service records) and had a major service done at 189,000 km (brakes, timing belts, driveshaft, etc...). If I do decide to get this car, I plan to get the RACV (AAA equivalent) to give the car the once-over before finalising the deal.

Should I be wary of the high odometer reading given the age of the car? Should I look for a slightly older model with fewer kms?

I've spent the last hour looking online on the young car high mileage question and the gist I'm getting is that as long as the car has been meticulously maintained with regular service intervals including oil changes, the car should still have a lot of life left in it. However, at that mileage a lot of things might need replacing or overhauling and this could add to the cost of ownership considerably.

I only plan on driving it on weekends to the beach (~100 km return trip) for scuba diving with the occasional longer trip, so don't plan on doing any really hard driving.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!

Specialists are people who know more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing. Generalists are people who know less and less about more and more until they know nothing about everything. I'm somewhere in the middle.
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