Buying used - high or low mileage?

Just wondered what the views on this were. On another forum I visit, there has been a heated debate about car auctions. One issue that came out was advice to go for high mileage ex fleet cars on the basis that they were driven for long distances and were maintained on the dot.

My last two VWs kind of bear this out although not a complete sample. My Bora was a T reg and had a massive mileage - 75,000 I seem to recall - at two years old. It was a 1.9 TDI. A great car that gave me no probs. Put it this way, the turbo did not sound like a police siren!

My current car was a low mileage Golf 1.9TDI bought from a main dealer. The service record was complete but it has the siren noise (from day one actually but that's another story0 and has had endless faults.

Not really a reperesentative sample but I had, a few years back, a Nissan Primera which I bought from an ex fleet specialist with 90,000 on the clock. That was a good car too.

Is low mileage a disadvantage? Especially on TDIs?

To be honest I dont mind the milage as long as the car as been well looked after, all the right parts changed for age.

If the engine has been well looked after, I would worry more about things that wear on all cars, such as steering etc.

But saying that at our company, the fleet cars while serviced are also sometimes serviced badly, one or two of the cars (diesels) came back with way overfull oil.

But i guess it depends on the service company in question.

Diesels also tend to live longer more than petrol, but with TDI's i've seen a lot of people in all makes have problems with theirs so perhaps TDI reliablity/resilience is getting similar to petrol equivalents due to performance increases of diesels.

But to be hosest its mostly speculation as it comes down to how well its been looked after, regular oil changes etc. Abused cars wont last long if they arent looked after.

So best bet, check service history, parts reciepts etc, and give it a drive and look over the state of the car for any obvious issues.

But any second hand car is a gamble imo, just depends on whether you think its worth plugging money into is as all older cars need.

(Im also not one for treating cars like takeaways - if i find a good car I'd be more inclined to look after it [not everyone has the same philosohpy] especially second hand. Im always doing routine maintenance in my golf and its going better than it ever did).

Yes - some good points Sammo. Seems to be the dreaded "turbo" on TDIs of all makes.

This overfilling with oil - I've had that on several cars over the years. I'm no mechanic, far from it, but it's supposed to be worse than underfilling. Doesn't take too much imagination to see what excess oil could do to something like a turbo.

I used to drain a bit off if it was overfilled. I once drained off over a litre.

Again, on turbos, heavily dependent on oil, you can see how frequent stop starts would cause additional wear on something spinning at over 100,000 rpm.

I have to admit though I was quite impressed on a guys BMW at work, he's got a 535i twin turbo, it held the heat in the oil all day, quite impressed. Not a fan of bmws generally. Although it came with a nice gearbox software error.

I'll be keeping tabs to see what issues it has first. Although it is the petrol, 07/8 plate I think.

Does take a long time to heat up though, 30 mins+