Buy used Lemon / buyback vehicles years later?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
May 10, 2005
Messages
2,118
Location
Jupiter, Fl
I saw a car with a branded title which showed that at 60 miles it was bought back under lemon law in NJ. I'm not interested in this particular vehicle, but the autocheck report shows that it was then sold to someone who put 40K miles on it, and then it was resold to someone else who put another 60K miles on it.

In a case like this, is it likely that the vehicle was properly repaired and then lived a normal life, and wouldn't potentially be more troublesome than any other random 100K mile 6 year old vehicle? Is there any way to find out what the defect was that caused the buyback?

My first inclination was to avoid it like the plague, but then I thought about the fact that it continued on for many more miles. I didn't see the price, but if there was a discount would you consider a 'lemon', or pass based on the lemon brand?
 
Years ago Ford bought a lemon van back from me, it was in for a stalling problem about 25 times or more. I have a lot of patience and found it entertaining, lol They tossed parts at it like mad, had so called senior techs/engineers look at it to no avail. They threw in the towel and boutht it back. About a year later I get a call from some guy that was interested in buying it from another dealer. He ran the vin and traced it back to me, he claimed to be a cop. Long story short I told him to stay clear. He told me how great the van looked, especially the inside which I had customized. He was [censored] bent on buying it. I left off with telling him you can lead a horse to water, and good luck.

The moral of my story: typically when a vehicle is bought back as a lemon it is. Unless you have some very good mechanic skills and get it at a tremendous discount I'd stay clear. However the one you're talking about sounds interesting though, maybe they sorted it out.
 
I test drove a Jaguar F-Type at the local Florida dealership on a very short drive. It had some unusual glitchy problems. Nothing horrible, but some surging and throttle issues along with wonky shifting.

A VIN check showed it was "Lemon-Law"d in CA for driveability issues. I guess shipping it from CA to FL did not fix the problems.....
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted by Cujet
I test drove a Jaguar F-Type at the local Florida dealership on a very short drive. It had some unusual glitchy problems. Nothing horrible, but some surging and throttle issues along with wonky shifting.

A VIN check showed it was "Lemon-Law"d in CA for driveability issues. I guess shipping it from CA to FL did not fix the problems.....


That's funny. Maybe they figured we'd wouldn't notice the issues down here.
 
Troll around and search for a used car dealer in Wall, NJ. They have 500+ cars in stock, many with stories of a dealer or corporate buy back. They do have the balance of factory warranties in many cases....who knew? The titles will reflect that they were bought back though.
 
It would be interesting to hear the story behind a car being bought back with only 60 miles on it.
 
Originally Posted by CBR.worm
Originally Posted by Cujet
I test drove a Jaguar F-Type at the local Florida dealership on a very short drive. It had some unusual glitchy problems. Nothing horrible, but some surging and throttle issues along with wonky shifting.

A VIN check showed it was "Lemon-Law"d in CA for driveability issues. I guess shipping it from CA to FL did not fix the problems.....


That's funny. Maybe they figured we'd wouldn't notice the issues down here.




It happens all the time with flood cars and such.
 
Originally Posted by DoubleNickels
Interesting. Lemon Law buybacks are resold. I never knew.


Yeah, they always did that. They wouldn't just crush the car. Depending on the state, some have requirements where they have to buy it back if they take more than 3 attempts to fix something. The buyer could just get tired of the dealer trying to fix it. As all the dealer bashing in this forum shows, sometimes they're not very good at fixing things so it's possible that whatever the problem got fixed at a later date. Cars are basically mechanical and anything can be fixed. Just depends on who's doing the fixing. It's not like like they're possessed by demons or anything like that.
 
Looking at carfax and autocheck reports of good looking used cars is interesting. I know there is a lot of stuff that both companies miss, but there are a lot of good looking (through the internet) used cars that have horrible histories. At least with a salvage title, you know what you are getting yourself into. With a lemon buyback that then carried on for many years, it makes you wonder.
 
Originally Posted by DoubleNickels
Interesting. Lemon Law buybacks are resold. I never knew.


You'd like to think the automaker ships them back to allow their engineers/expert techs repair issue and learn from it. Not sure what reality is.
 
Originally Posted by madRiver
Originally Posted by DoubleNickels
Interesting. Lemon Law buybacks are resold. I never knew.


You'd like to think the automaker ships them back to allow their engineers/expert techs repair issue and learn from it. Not sure what reality is.


That's exactly what happened to a catastrophe of an Audi A6 my friend's wife owned. Nobody-including a dude flown in from Germany-could fix the bizarre electrical problems! They bought it back under the lemon law, and she was told it was going to be shipped back to Wolfsburg for a full teardown and analysis.
 
If the pricing was right, I would not scoff at buying a lemon. Anything can be eventually troubleshot and fixed. Most lemons bought back are not because it is unfixable, just usually that the vehicle manufacturer warranty process and costs make it cost prohibitive for them to drill down to root cause and fix. A private party and/or mechanical savvy buyer can make lemonade out of lemons on most of these vehicle.

I work in aviation on large aircraft that many times exhibit just as complicated if not more complicated problems that new automobiles have. Just in aviation, there is many more millions of dollars on the line and the financial incentive to find and fix is there.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top