Impossible choice- high mileage prime/low milage salvage title

Wait a while and buy new? Set your sights lower, buy a gen 4? For the interim buy something else, cheaper?

Regarding 5th gen Prius, just my 2 cents: I wouldn't buy anything that doesn't come with a spare. But hey, it's a cottage industry here, buy the latest bells-and-whistles from Toyota, then retrofit the essentials.

 

are you a serious automobile diy'er with all the tools?

 

If your a serious DIY and know their way around cars; I'd probably stick with the high mileage freeway runner.
As for the salvage car, your trying to talk yourself into excuses to buy it???? Insurance fraud; really???? You need to pull the body panel plastics to get a good look at what was really damaged. Glue & plastic is like putting lip stick on a pig - IMHO. What do you think you could get for a high mileage salvage car and will the battery & EV power train warranty be valid????

Just spit-balling here...

 

Personally, I'd go with the high milage Prime. By my math, 170k works out to be about 325 miles per day(assuming 5 days a week for 2 years), with an average speed of 40mph(assuming an 8-hour day). To me, that says a lot of highway miles. I wouldn't even mind a history of 10k oil changes for a vehicle like that.

The M20A engine has been out long enough to start showing any bad trends at high milage, and none seem to be happening. The 5th gen hybrid system is technically new, but it's really just a tweak of the 4th gen system and that's been rock solid to my knowledge.

I'd take some of that $2k savings and have a complete service done to it. Oil, both coolants, transaxle fluid, and an A/C service(evacuate, weigh refrigerant, pressure test, refill) just to be safe and start your ownership on a clean slate. The A/C service is just because it's also used to cool the HV battery. I don't know if the A/C service is also in the Prius Prime maintenance schedule, but I'm pretty sure the RAV4 Prime has it in there at one of the higher milage intervals.

The only thing that might give me some pause would be if the coolant was never changed. It should have been changed at 100k and 150k. Transaxle fluid should have been done around 60k and 120k, though I wouldn't throw a fit if it was only done once at 90k.


(all info comes from different videos from TheCarCareNut on YouTube)

 

Do a vin search on the salvage car. stat.vin ($7 compared to Carfax which is $25.) Stat.vin will have auction pics, you will see if it was sold in wrecked condition which is common. It can also say if the airbags went off, which is a sign of collision severity.

I don't have a problem with salvage cars if they are repaired properly. And the price is always lower, and the quality can be nearly as good. Get a good used car inspection. Lower miles are usually better if the repairs are good.

 

Ya see; that's the rub. Was it a shade-tree mechanic or a professional body & frame shop that put it back together? What corners was cut and are all the safety options functional or bypassed or turned-off? The insurance company cut the previous owner a check for at least $25K+; so you know that was the lowest repair estimate for a professional shop to fix it correctly.
Today's car's front and rear exterior body panels are mostly plastic. It can easily be snapped, tie wrapped, taped, glued together and painted over - hiding the real damage behind it. How will this car handle another collision? Was the energy absorbing baffles of the uni-body replaced? As I stated earlier; the plastic outer shell needs to come off to inspect if the repair job was correctly done.

 

Can't claim experience with that model, but I'd take the hi-miles one in a cocaine heartbeat

 

Assuming the reason for these two choices was price...neither. The TCO advantage is already lost on high mileage and a salvage vehicle just throws any TCO to the wind. While I highly attest to the reliability of Prius...all bets are off with these two. Respects, but if you can...keep looking.