How many km's is too many when buying a used car!

spraggles, Dec 7, 7:23am
I am looking at buying a second hand wagon, possibly a toyota carib or a caldina or something similar. I want it to be an everyday runaround car. How many km's is too many in your opinion! If I was looking to try and get 5 years use at least. Obviously there are many factors to consider but am curious what others think about it when they search for cars

morrisman1, Dec 7, 7:26am
depends entirely on the car and how well it has been treated. If it has been well maintained for 300,000km then chances are things like suspension components are the things to concentrate on when inspecting but a poorly maintained car could be stuffed by 100,000km.

so simply, there is no definite answer. I use KMs as more of a guideline for what to expect when going to inspect the car. Obviously there are things what wear regardless and this is stuff like interior components, hinges, wheel bearings, suspension bushes, steering rack boots. All that sort of thing should be inspected on higher KM cars especially. Items like engine, gearbox and diff are probably in great condition if the maintenance schedule has been adhered to.

tgray, Dec 7, 7:29am
I wouldn't buy a car with more than 200,000k's on the clock.
Yes, it's my personal bias and it may have nothing wrong with it, but 'twice around the clock' is getting up there.

xs1100, Dec 7, 7:29am
if it was a english car anything over 100ks and i mean a 100ks and you could be facing problems but i brought a nissan 10 yrs ago and it had done 170ks then done 300 now and still fine

spraggles, Dec 7, 8:04am
Awesome cheers for the advice

44.magnum, Dec 7, 9:32am
4 cylinder 80k-120k
6+ cylinder 100k- 140k
think about resale in 5 years how many km's do you think will be on it by then most people with a choice wont touch a car with 200k+ most people do 10-15k per year hope this helps

henderson_guy, Dec 7, 9:43am
Service history is far more important in my eyes. Most cars, properly maintained, will do many, many km's before wear issues start surfacing.

twink19, Dec 7, 8:35pm
I bought a Falcon wagon done 260k 2 years ago, 2 owners been serviced by ford since new, $4k, hasnt missed a beat now on 291k, used for towing. resale not an issue with high kms

phalanax, Dec 7, 9:03pm
How longs a peice of string.lol

curlcrown, Dec 7, 11:56pm
there is no answer to that qeustion. I have owned a car done 460000km and done 15000km in it without a single problem and I have also owned a car with less than 100000km on it that needed a grand of unexpected expendature on different issues within a very short time. There are simply so many other factors to concider. It would be potentaly costly to not concider a car simply because of high km.