And if you buy a newer car with low mileage, it will still have factory warranty, all the cars that I bought were under factory warranty.

 

Got kids, gotta have a van, I am realizing this now every day.

 

All of the dealers around here buy their cars from auction, no one keeps a trade, the big dealers in town sell the junk trades on their "low budget buy here pay here wrong side of town" car lots, all of the rest go to local auction.
I am also looking at local repo lots.
I have a friend who works at the big local auto auction here in town, he is a mechanic and it is his job to check ever car out before it goes up for sale, he is related to the owner of the auction.
He can ruin a transmission in 10min, burn up the brakes in 5.
So I am going to talk to him and see what he says, I am taking the Rover to his shop at the auction early next month to do my brake job, full service shop, lift and all.
I am hoping to slide in under the radar and buy a van.

Thank you for all of your help and info guys.

Buzz, thank you for the specific info.

 

Stay away from the auctions. I went to manheim in NJ a few weeks back, just a bunch of freaks and weirdos ripping eachother off. Everyone has a buddy that bids the car up to the reserve. Every car is smashed up or repo or insurance fixer upper. every car has the same problems, hook your scanner up, no readiness tests run, they clear the codes before they drop the cars off. Different instrument clusters in cars from out of state, you have to wait weeks sometimes to get a title to find out the mileage on the car is different. These guys have been playing this game for years and years, you wont beat them.

 

Everyone has a story......At the end of the day you just have to be smart and know what to look for.Whether it be public auction,dealer aution or sales lot and private seller they can all get ya....

 

like foreclosures you have to be armed with knowledge and cash. these are sharks. in my opinion you'll always do better with a private seller, making a low but reasonable offer and being prepared to say no thanks.

 

We are not buying the first one we see, we are taking our time.
Of course we want it for free, we would like a brand new van because we always keep our cars forever.
If I dont like what they have at auction I will pass, the wifes car is almost dead so we need to do something soon but once the kids are out of school for the summer we can do without it and of course the good old reliable 214k Disco will be the do it all to the rescue car once again.
I really do love my truck, she has never let me down, not once, always starts, always runs well and has yet to need a major repair.
I hope our van will be good, the Volvo has not been, we had high hope's for it but it was a huge let down.
The truck will get about 500 miles this weekend and I wont even think twice about it.
Thanks for all the input guys.