rev up your engines, I'm always being asked by my customers and by you viewers
Scotty should I buy a used car from a car rental agency, and my answer is
generally no, I would not buy a used car from a car rental agency and my first
reason for not wanting to buy a car that came from a car rental company has to do
with me and other people who rent cars, all the time when I travel distances
I don't have time to drive, I fly in a plane then I rent a car, and when I rent cars
generally I beat the heck out of them, I'm in a hurry I don't care what kind of
roads I go on, I really don't care where I parked the car, they're not taken care
of by the drivers all that much, rental cars often take large beatings over a
couple of years hundreds of people probably rent each individual car, who
knows how they drive, how they took care of it, if it hit curbs, if they backed up
into stuff, and here's a big thing that a lot of people might not understand but
they're gonna find out now, most major car rental places they're self insured
they're not insured them through a company, they insure themselves they're
so big they save money that way, but it can be a bad thing if you're buying
a used one from them, if you're self insured hey to handle all in a house
what happens is, if it's been in a wreck you may never find out, do a Carfax if
it didn't go through an insurance company, carfax isn't gonna have any
information on, oh gee it was wrecked and then they fixed it, they do that all in
house, I had a costumer bought a Mazda from one of these car rental places, about a
year later he got in a little wreck and his body man said, hey look at this this
cars been in a big wreck before because it's got an aftermarket bumper on it
it's not the Mazda bumper, well he was never told that the car had been in a
wreck but unfortunately for the car rental company my customer was a lawyer
he was gonna sue them and they said what do you want he says well you know I want
the money back I paid for the car and I'm gonna keep the car, and so that's what
they gave him, so basically you got a free car but still that was the car that
had been in a wreck, and you take a big company like say Hertz last I checked
they had over 400,000 cars that they had that they were renting out in the United
States, that's a lot of cars and a lot of stuff can fall
under the cracks, I wouldn't advise anybody to buy one of those cars myself
and that actually brings me to another reason not to buy a car from them
they're priced way too high, they're all done by their bookkeepers to say, well we
depreciated this much of this, and if they say one $22,500 for the car, that's
what they're gonna ask, and they won't accept anything less, their selling cars and
they said these cars go for this kind of money we don't take anything less, and as
I said in a previous video, the book value of cars is artificially inflated
in the United States, the companies that make these book ratings of what cars are
worth are now owned by companies that sell used cars, so it's a very corrupt
system, take England in England used cars are much cheaper than the United States
because they don't have such a corrupt system as they do here in the United
States, to give you an analogy go to a jeweler, show him a diamond ring get it appraised
and then say okay what will you give me for that, well they're gonna give
you a tons less because they wanna sell it and make a bunch of money, so it's to
their advantage that the sales price for them is really high, even though the
actual value is much lower, and with these car rental companies like I said
they say one low price, you know what a bunch of nonsense the money that they
want to get and if you don't want it hey they won't sell it to you, because in
reality used cars are used, anything that's used as far as I'm concerned has
whatever value anybody will pay for it, there is no actual value set in stone
and considering that you'd be buying a used car that have been driven by
hundreds of different people and the price is really high, it's not fair if
you buy a car from one owner car, you know he took care of it, he's thinking
well I'm gonna keep it for a while I'm gonna sell it so I'm gonna take good
care of it fine, but if you're buying a car that's been
driven by hundreds of different people, at a really high price it's just not a
smart thing to do, the rental car companies get a big deal I mean look at
Hertz if they own over 400 thousand cars that they're renting out, they're gonna
cut a pretty tight deal on what they're gonna pay for these cars, so my friend
who worked on the Chevy factory said hey we all knew the next five thousand were
going to rental car, so we didn't have to be that great on the fit and the finish
because it wasn't being bought by a private individual who might look at the
car examine it, make sure everything's okay
it's being sold in a fleet to a rental car company, let's face it even when
you rent a car, when you bring it back there's usually a very cursory check of
the car when you bring it back, specially guys like me if I fly out early in the
morning and it's five o'clock in the morning, and you drive it in, a guy just
kind of looks around the car and checks the mileage and sees it's full of gas and
that's it, and personally I have to vouch on this they seem to be cheaper
made the ones that are sent on rental car companies because I rented a car
once in Wisconsin, well I got in the car and closed the door on the inside one
time and a couple of screws fell out on my lap from the dash when I closed the door
I guess they weren't so prideful in Indiana and when they made that rental
car, if these rental car companies are cutting the best deal that they can, for
the companies making them thinking, well they really cut us down we're not
making much profit so let's whip these things out as fast as we can, over
the decades I've been renting cars I had cars where the dashes weren't even glued
in right they were crooked, a lot of them had much more rattles than normal cars
that my customers had in them, even though they were low mileage when I was
renting them, and if you're looking at buying a used one say of a model that's
notorious for having transmission problems, people who are renting them
their driving the heck on them they don't care that the transmission is weak
it's not their car, a private individual owns one, odds are they're gonna take
better care, they're not gonna drive it as fast, taking chances with the
transmission by over revving it and stuff, but when it's a rental car
hey that stuff happens all the time, so if you got a relatively weak
transmission to begin with and you're buying a rental car with that, hey I've
had many customers have that happen and the transmission went out within a
couple years of them buying the vehicle, and of course another reason I say not
to buy them is the maintenance factor, guys who are mechanics for the car
rental companies, they don't get paid like regular mechanics do at a
dealership, as an example last I checked they were paying about $33,000 a year
for the mechanics and Hertz, well the Ford mechanics they're getting
paid on average about $47,000 a year, so not only are the mechanics at the rental
car places being paid less, they have to work on all the different kinds of cars
that the company buys, where say a guy is working at a Ford dealership
he's only working on Fords, he has all the specialized equipment at the Ford
garage, and of course he's gonna do a better job
he's getting paid more, he has better equipment, and people can say all they
want, oh we have service records for it, it's paperwork it means nothing, I've
been in many rental cars where the maintenance light were on, when I checked
the oil the oil was low because they hadn't changed it regularly enough, Hey
paperwork doesn't mean anything ,anybody can fill out paperwork what's actually
done that can be another story entirely, but let's say you're in a pinch you got
to get a car fast, well let's face it they got a lot of late-model cars
and yes you're gonna overpay, they charge too much for them, but let's say your
looking at a Toyota Corolla, you're looking at a really bulletproof car, I've
got customers with them that have two- 300,000 miles and basically all they
ever did in the cars was change the oil and filter, and the brake pads when they
wore out and they're still running strong, so they can take a lot of abuse
before they fall apart, so if you're hard-pressed to find a decent car, maybe
get a Toyota Corolla from one of these, but please don't go buy a Chrysler from
one of these things, their bad enough new, and you buy one that's been driven by
hundreds of people, I had a customer do that once with a Sebring and that car
just fell apart in the first year that he owned it, and if you are going to buy
a used car from a rental car company, you pay a guy like me a professional
mechanic to check it out before you buy, because as I say as their self insured
it might have been in a wreck you're never gonna
be able to find out, but a good mechanic we can find that stuff out, when I'm
checking out a used-car, first thing I do is go all around with a flashlight and
look for mismatched paint where I can see, hey this black parts got a little
white on it and it's a white car obviously it's been wreck and repainted,
we can find that stuff pretty fast and of course don't listen to anything the
salesman says, I've done that for customers and showed them that, look
this car was obviously in a wreck, and they go back and they say oh your mechanic is
crazy, oh look the paperwork shows it's never been in a wreck, well like I said
paperwork anybody can make up paperwork actually obvious that the cars been in
a wreck, you don't buy it and you can't trust anybody these days,
so you have a mechanic check it out before you buy, you can tell paint
imperfections and if you see that this fender is a little different color than the
hood, you'll know it's been wrecked, then you walk away from
their car right away and start looking at the other ones, a lot of times right
before they sell them, they do all the cosmetic stuff, so let's say you're
looking to buy one use your nose too, because if you smell
fresh paint all over the place, you know they've touched it all up and they
painted it all over just to sell it to you and then you might find a year later
all that paint starts to fade off because they didn't do such a hot job,
again there's a great deal of difference between a private individual that's
selling their own car that they knew, if I take care of it I'll get decent money
when I sell it, versus a corporation that has hundreds of thousands of cars, that
when they sell them they just want to get it to look as shiny as possible on the
outside and unload them as fast as they can because they have hundreds of
thousands of them that they have to get rid of, my advice is stay away from buying
a used car from a rental car lot, so if you never want to miss another one of my
new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell