Rev up your engines, today I'm going to talk about 5 used sports
cars that you should never buy, now buying a used sports car is one of the toughest things
to do correctly, with all used sports cars there's two main problems, the first one is,
people who buy sports cars tend to drive the heck out of them, so with any used sports
car you got to check it out to make sure that it's still in good shape, not also the resale
value of sports cars is often rather low, the go for a rather cheap price compared to
what a new one costs, and that's the second thing you got to worry about, over the last
51 years I can't think of how many customers I had who said, oh scotty look I got a really
good deal on this used sports car, to which I will often respond, you think you got a
really good deal, let's look a little bit further to see if you did or didn't, because
as one of my customers bought himself a porsche and thought, wow I only paid $8,000 for this
shinny porsche what a deal, and compared to the original price oh course that's a deal,
but what he didn't realize was, that particular porsche, hey you're going to expect to spend
$5-10k a year maintaining a used porsche like that, it's going to need transmission work
probably, eventually it's going to need engine work, you're looking at big money repairs,
that's why the used one was so cheap, so you always have to have a mechanic like me check
one of before you buy it of course, here are 5 used sports cars that you should
never even think about buying, but here I'm going to give you a little disclaimer, I'm
not going to be talking about exotic sports cars, or Italian sports cars, because really
never buy a used exotic sports car or a used Italian sports car, they are money pits when
their new and when their used their doubly so, so just stay away from all of those if
you value your money, now the first used sports car not to buy is
the mercedes sl600, you do not want to buy a used v12 mercedes sports car, now I have
had customers that did, and only one of them was ever happy, he got it cheap, he realized,
I'm only going to use this thing on the weekends for a knock around car, I know I can put a
ton of money into it if I have to, he was happy with the car that he kept for 2 years,
but then again he only put like 1-2 thousand miles on it total in two years, and it didn't
ride all that great because the struts were all wearing out on it and he didn't want to
spend the money to fix that, so he just stayed away from really bumpy road and he didn't
take long trips or anything in it, to him it was kind of a lawn ornament you know, but
if you're going to buy something like that and actually drive it around, the thing is
going to bankrupt you, that's why you can find cars like that, that originally went
for $100k+ and you can pick them up all day long for $15k or sometimes as little as $8k,
but there's a reason you can buy them so cheap used,
so stay away from that mercedes sports car if you're looking at a used sports car, now
the next used sports car not to buy is a gm product, the pontiac solstice they were kind
of cooling looking, and the were fun to drive, they put little engines in them but they were
all modded and they could really go, but they could also really fall apart, my customers
that owned them, the either go rid of them as they aged, or they bought them cheap second
hand and used them for a weekend toy, and the customers of mine that bought them as
weekend toy, they still tended to fall apart, it didn't matter if they only drove 1,000-3,000
miles a year they still starting falling apart as they got older, with gm's designs would
show and things started breaking, so as far as I'm concerned the pontiac solstice, hey
it's another lawn ornament, it looks cool you know, I mean if you want to have a collection
of cars and have them lying around and you look at them, yeah it's cool looking you know,
and they were fun to drive around, you'd go around the block a couple times hey it looks
cool, but it's not something that you want to buy used and expect to get a lot of life
out of, now the next used car not to buy is the porsche
911 m96, I wouldn't advice anybody to buy any kind of porsche second hand because of
their high parts costs, high repair labor because of their crazy designs, and basically
they do have a tendency of falling apart as they age, hey it had serious engine problems,
they didn't build the internals right, and a lot of the engines blew out, and if you
want to price a new engine in a porsche, you better have some money in your bank account,
I would have to say with the porsche 911s that's probably the worst used sports car
you could possibly buy, from my own customers experience I've had quite a few of them say,
hey look scotty I got a great deal on this 911 porsche, and then if they keep it for
a year or two or three years and they total what they have to spend on it or what they
will have to spend if they want it to run right, their like oh man I'm kicking myself
for buying that thing, I even had one customer who bought one new and then kept it for decades
thinking, I'm not going to drive it much, after decades he had like 20,000 miles on
the car, and he thought oh it's going to be worth money one day, then we went to try to
sell it when it was old and he was old too, and he found out nobody wanted to pay any
serious money for that thing everybody knows how much money it costs to fix them, and when
it was that old all the rubber parts went out, the ac went out, the steering bushings
went out, I mean those are expensive cars to maintain and buying a used one, is probably
one of the worst decisions anyone could ever make,
now the next used sports car not to buy is the dodge challenger, especially the 2013-2014
model, consumer reports, they said that it didn't even complete their reliability test,
the 2013-2014 challengers, yes they have a lot of horsepower, but v8 engines that are
screamers, they are a chrysler product and they do have a tendency of falling apart as
they age, people are always doing burnouts in them, the people who buy those cars with
the big v8 engines, they drive the heck out of them, the probably get the most abuse of
any sports car out there, if your buying a used one your taking a huge gamble that the
thing is going to last and it's not on it's final legs already, if you really have the
hots for one of those, lease the thing, then you know what you're going to pay out, your
leasing the vehicle, it's not something long term and you can have some fun with it, but
buying a used one, is that a gamble, my advice with that one is, get an older one, maybe
from the 60's, that at least will hold it's value, you take care of it, if you like it
you could keep it forever, if you don't you could sell it, if you get it at a good price,
the modern ones their values go down fast now the last used sports car never to buy
is the audi s5, yes another German car isn't that surprising, now I've had a lot of customers
that were suckered and they thought they'd buy one used because of the prices, a new
one when it went for $54k hey it loses over $34k of it's value if it's 4-5 years old,
so they thought hey, I can get a $54k car for $20k and it look great and it handles
and rides really well, at least for the time being, they are endless money pits as the
age, price some of the parts at an audi dealership, and at least here in the US it's not that
easy to get aftermarket parts that are any good for audis, they don't sell enough of
each model, like Toyota they sell million of camrys, corollas, aftermarket parts are
all over the place, but with the audis your often stuck to dealer only parts where they
just stick it to you with a crazy pricetag and half the time they don't even have it
in stock you have to order it and wait, as an example I was working on one time, and
I found out it needed a fuel pressure regulator, a little bitty thing you know it should be
$80-90 max right, so I go in and they say, well we don't sell the fuel pressure regulator
as a individual part, you got to buy this whole assembly for $900 something, and this
was on a customers car who had of course bought the thing used and thought he got a deal,
well at least I got it to run decently, I didn't put the part on it was so expensive
and he just sold the car, he said I can see it's a money pit and he got rid of the car,
and since he bought it used he only lost like $3-4,000 so that's a cheap lesson to learn
and not buy one of these audi in the first place when their used, so hopefully now I've
saved you guys a whole bunch of money and grief by telling you which used sports cars
that you should just run away from if you're even thinking about buying one,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring
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