Buying advise

welcome!
the worst case scenario is more than a bad battery. you want a full ownership, service and accident history.
if it looks okay do a long detailed test drive.
if you like it, take it to a dealership, and pay for a complete inspection.
all the best!

 

Mathematically you'd be better off buying the 2007 and sinking $3000 for a new battery. You'd likely be good for 200,000+ miles!

 

fly to ny/nj for a $3,500. rebate on prime. get another 3-4k off from the dealer, and a $4,500. federal tax credit. now your in a state of the art phev for under $17,000. before ttl, and you might even get a state tax credit on top.

 

Go for a Prime. You don't know what happened and many things can go wrong when not maintained properly for 10 years.

 

I agree with the last three posters. I have a 2005 with only 80K miles. In the past 18 months I've replaced the cooling motors (there's two of them) not to mention the other maintenance required for a 12 year old vehicle. And, to top it all, just two weeks ago I had to replace the hybrid battery. (I just posted about that experience earlier.)

My point is - you're very wise to question this as-is vehicle from a dealership who is clearly willing to take no accountability. I suspect there's lots of gremlins lurking in that one.

 

What does this kind of boil down to?
Should you invest $5400 into a 10 year old vehicle you know nothing about, OR should you buy a brand new one, with a new car warranty,

That's quite a jump from one extreme to the other.

66 miles a day, 6 days a week.

I think it comes down to what you can afford. IF you can afford a new Prius? Go for it. Especially if it's your ONLY vehicle and you need it f or back and forth to work.

If you can't afford new car payments? Then Toyota's owners website allows you to look up reported dealer maintenance if you enter the vehicles VIN number. Even if you have to pay out of your own pocket, I'd get a Carfax.
Again if you can afford it, an independent inspection would be ideal.

I'd do at least these things before I wrote the check.
But IMO if you can afford to go new?
Well I'd rather face 66 Miles a day, with a brand new vehicle, than HOPE the 10 year old used vehicle I bought holds up.
But there is a enormous difference between your two speculative choices.

Since at this point you really know nothing about the used vehicle beyond year, model and asking price, the worst case scenario is basically anything and everything.

If everything checked out OK, I'd still want to have enough budgeted or set aside incase of Hybrid Battery replacement.

 

From my personal experience buying 9 years old Prius with 190K
you are looking at following for maintenance costs around 3K+ (spent so far) :
- Rebuild Hybrid Battery
- new Suspensions
- Transmission Oil change
- 12V battery
- new tires
- Oil Valve
- New Air Filter Engine/Cabin
- Headlight Bulbs HID and Headlight assembly
- Fog Light bulbs (LED)
- Park Light bulbs (LED)
- Recharge A/C

Here is I am looking at next:
- Front Seats upholstery - or replace
- Water pump
- ABS Actuator (nagging issue)
- Horn Relay Switch

Over all I wish I spent 9K and gotten five/six years old Prius with under 100K... But you never know if that would have required all maintenance.

I am afraid to change spark plugs at this point but planning to do it or pay dealer to do it so it's under warranty.

 

I would buy it (based on the limited information I know right now)

The two options you are presenting are

1. $5400 for a 10-year-old car that may or may not have problems
2. $25k+ for a new car that may or may not have problems (but it much less likely to have problems than the $5400 car)

You're not going to pour $20k into this car to get it into shape. The things I would do to ensure the purchase of the used car would be vehicle history check, test drive, and have my mechanic look it over. Used car dealers pretty much exclusively sell cars in the fashion you're saying (as is), at least in my state. There is no expectation of warranty when buying a used vehicle, so I wouldn't be scared off by that statement. State laws often include statutes for used car dealerships that they must provide refunds if the car turns out to be a lemon within a certain time frame. You may want to check your local laws to verify if you're really worried about that.

To me, this is a no-brainer in favor of the used vehicle, so long as it checks out pretty well with the things discussed above.

 

Not bad...You are paying a large premium but you are getting very low miles....One with double the miles still can go for $4000 if it is extremely clean with zero issues --- at least in my area.

So is a $1400 premium worth having low miles? I would say yes assuming the vehicle is in beautiful condition inside and out with no warning lights, drives great, and everything functioning like-new.

There is no in between on the batteries from what I have read...When it fails you will know due to a bunch of lights on the dash.

 

What a person can "afford" means different things to different people.

Our neighbor believed that you NEVER spend you own money, always borrow, because a dollar will always be worth less in the future. Apparently paying someone to use their money, making your pile that much smaller than inflation loss, was ok???

Others have the opinion that for "$XXX.xx/month" having a "new" car with a warranty is worth it. Hmm, I could have purchased TWO MORE Gen2 Prii with the typical new car payments we did not make in the past year. YMMV.

Then there is our family's definition of "affordability". If you cannot take DOLLARS out of your pocket to make the purchase, you by definition, cannot afford it. The only exception to that we have made is housing, the wages have fallen so far behind the housing costs, it is simply impossible to pay cash for even a very modest home.

I almost left out the "Fleasing" option, LoL. Give the dealer a few hundred (or thousand) up front, then a couple hundred more every month for 24-36 months and when you are done, you don't get to keep anything.