Name a top European brand and these days you can
buy it for near nothing. Yep, for the price of a humble Falcon or Commodore you
can take home a prestige make like BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Saab, Jaguar or Volvo.
These are cars from manufacturers with huge brand heritage, undoubted impact and
often brilliant engines and handling. But buying this type of car is also a
potential disaster, though – it must be said – not quite of the scale that any
number of people will tell you!
So what do you look out for when buying a
sub-AUD$10,000 prestige car?
Research!
We know it’s not a fashionable first move, but
little beats finding out lots about a car before taking things further. I mean,
if I say “1989 Audi 90 20 valve” it’s pretty likely that you’ll not know much
about the car: it’s a relatively rare prestige compact sedan.
But a look around the Web and examination of some
back issues of car magazines in a library (many large libraries have an index of
road tests) will soon reveal that the model is a 2.3 litre, 5 cylinder, 125kW,
constant all-wheel drive (and with a Torsen centre LSD, not the relatively crude
viscous coupling of most Subaru WRXs!) having a 0-100 km/h time of about 8.5
seconds. Looking a bit further will show a new price of AUD$80,000, a mass of
1320kg and good suspension design front and back. A glance at a car valuation
site (in Australia, www.redbook.com.au is a good one) will
give you current values and some basic mechanical details.
The same kind of information is useful about any
prestige oldie – what’s the difference between the BMW 735i, 535i and 750iL of
late Eighties vintage? Do all Saab turbos of the same era have similar power
outputs? What’s the major variation between an Audi 80 and 90? And so on...
While doing the research it also makes sense to
call a specialist private repairer of these cars. Don’t bother ringing a factory
dealer; the number of people who get their new-cost-$90,000 car serviced at a
dealer when its value is now maybe $10,000 can be measured on the fingers on one
hand. And of course, dealers don’t like having old cars in their yard that show
how astonishing the depreciation can be... (Not until the cars are so old that
they’re classics – and then they’re welcomed back!) Instead, ring workshops with
names like MB Spares, Rick’s Saab Workshop, and so on.
The questions to ask include common faults and the
costs to repair them. Also, ask for the cost of a basic engine rebuild, and the
same for a transmission. While you’re on the phone, check the price of brake
pads and discs, suspension dampers (shock absorbers), in manual cars a clutch,
and suspension bushes and ball-joints.
Finally, use the Web to ensure there’s a workshop
manual available for the car, being careful it covers the exact model you’re
looking at.
Looking!
The next step is to look bloody closely at the
car. Of course this applies to all used cars, but with prestige used cars pay
particular attention to exterior lights and trim strips, and interior seats,
door linings and fittings. A missing interior door handle surround might take
forever to replace (well, at a low cost anyway) and a sagging roof lining might
not worry you on the test drive – but might piss you off hugely every day of
ownership! In Australia, these cars are always going to be in the minority, so
replacing small trim details and lights can be more hassle than you might first
expect.
Look carefully for rust, including inside the
doors, inside the boot spare wheel well and along front rail seams in the engine
bay. Consider the quality of the paint – the more prestige a car is in brand,
the more a faded or scratched paint job will tend to be noticed. If the car has
an extensive tool kit as standard (BMW’s have them in a tray inside the
boot-lid), see how complete it is. The presence or otherwise of a few spanners
isn’t a big deal – but it is a good indication of how well the car has been
cared for. A fastidious owner won’t have had any missing spanners in their car’s
toolkit... For the same reason, carefully check the spare tyre.
Look at all the panel margins – those are the gaps
between the panels. Again, on its own a panel margin doesn’t matter much but it
gives a good guide to whether the car’s been in an accident, and if it has, how
well the vehicle has been repaired. Margins should be even (ie the same width
right along their length) and tight. Carefully check the interior trim for wear
– especially the seats and driver’s side carpet. These are often a better
indication of distance the car has travelled than the kilometres shown on the
odometer.
Multiple pairs of eyes are always better than just
your own. In fact, it’s often good to take along someone not particularly
interested in cars – they’re likely to notice the rather major things (like one
alloy wheel is different to the others) while you’re engrossed in checking the
engine for oil leaks.
If you intend modifying the car, look carefully at
the engine to ensure it runs electronic injection, rather than one of the older
mechanical systems. Mercedes, Saab, Audi and Volvo persisted with mechanical
injections systems surprisingly late into their models, and these are much
harder to modify than the more sophisticated electronic systems. One easy way of
telling what’s what is to look for high pressure braided or metal tubes running
to the injectors, rather than a normal fuel rail common to electronic
systems.
And remember that Audi 20 valve? It looked really
good – the paint was fine with just a few car park dings to show it was
original; as expected, the galvanised body panels displaying no rust; seat trim
and carpet good. But the doors were rather hard to shut and the car didn’t
really have the features commensurate with a new price of $80,000 in 1989 – no
standard cruise control (a bodgy aftermarket one had been added) and no climate
control... in fact no cabin electrics at all.
Driving!
Don’t ever buy a prestige car without
driving it! I’ve driven dozens over the years and some drive superbly – and
others like absolute buckets.
The first point to realise is that the odometer
kilometres also are a much less useful guide than with garden variety cars. A
prestige car was well built and well designed; if it has been maintained as the
manufacturer expected, it probably is still well built and showing its good
design – even with high kilometres. But if maintenance has been stretched
thinly, well, these cars with high specific power engines and complex drivelines
tend not to like that much...
I recently drive a Mercedes 300D of 1988 vintage
with no less than 475,000 kilometres on the clock. Besides a squeaking
suspension at the back on one side, it drove superbly. Good steering, good ride,
good handling, good engine and gearbox. Another car I drove was a 1987 Volvo 245
wagon. Despite being for sale at just AUD$600 – and needing some cosmetics and
rear suspension bushes – it also drove very well. And its doors shut just as
they did on the day it was made – like the closing of bank vaults. A 1990 BMW
535i? It had a squeaking brake caliper and the idle was rather rough but the
lovely 3.5-litre six revved superbly – and with real power – at the top end.
But the well presented Audi 20 valve? What a heap!
The suspension clinked, the gearbox was vague, the five cylinder spent a lot of
its time on four cylinders, the stitching was pulling out of the leather
steering wheel, the headlining was falling down, the idle was coarse – oh yes,
and on the providentially wet road, the grip was excellent! $6000? I don’t think
so. Maybe $3000..... seriously!
While it is of course possible to drive a car that
feels good on the road but has a whole lot of hidden problems, that’s a much
less likely scenario than just inspecting the car that looks good and then
buying it on face value. When you full-throttle accelerate, brake hard enough to
activate ABS (if fitted), let the car idle as you switch in loads like air con
and power steering, listen for suspension noise, see if the car tracks straight,
feel the take-up of the clutch or the harshness of auto changes (and so on), the
mechanical gremlins are much more easily revealed.
Bargaining
Let’s be realistic: lots of people don’t
want an old prestige car. That puts you in a strong bargaining position when it
comes to prices: expect at minimum to get 10 per cent off the stickered price.
The Audi? It could have been mine for $6000 rather
than the initially asked $7000 (the yard dropped it by $1000 immediately I said
I didn’t think much of how it drove); the high-kilometres Mercedes 300D went
from $8990 to an amazing $6000 when I did the big ask; and the BMW 535i was
being displayed at $10,000 and could, I think, have been an $8500 car.
As with buying secondhand goods, if you want the
absolute best deal you need to be prepared to walk away – but by the same token,
you also need to show the seller you’re serious. One good approach is to offer
an immediate cash deposit, if they are prepared to take your lower price. So for
example, on an $8,000 car, you say: “I’ll give you $700 right now and the
remainder on Wednesday if you’ll take $7000 for it”.
Real World
In the last few years I have owned a 1985 BMW 735i
and 1989 Saab 900 Turbo. In times past I’ve driven an AlfaSud, BMW 3.0si and
Audi 5-cylinder S4. Compared with Japanese and Australian fare, Euro cars have
poise, interest and driving tactility. On paper they don’t always make a
persuasive case, but on the road they often do just that.
Find a good, ‘honest’ car and a find a good,
honest specialist in these cars, and you can be in for a very rewarding
experience. But remember: research, look, drive and bargain!
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