Ask Mr Mojo. He has a 93 and a 95. I don't remember which is which, but one is a high mileage 6spd, the other, a low mileage A4.

He is one person.

The problem is that the low mileage A4 has caused him more grief in the first 3 months than the 6spd has ever caused.

Was the car maintained? Probably not.....

2000 miles a year is just enough to keep the seals soft... but many times a car with low miles is simply not driven enough to keep those seals soft. I have read too many posts on this forum over the last 5.5 years to tell ya... get an older trailer queen and you will have to do serious PM.[/QUOTE]

Actually, I just figured it out, its only been 2,000 miles in 3 years.
I better get out and check my car, I bet its about to spring an oil leak

Also, about 3 months ago, my daily driver C4 needed, new hoses, tires, clutch, headlight gears, optispark and waterpump. Oh Gee, I guess miles do take its toll on a Corvette. Parts wear out plain and simple.

I'm fixing to pickup another low mile ZR-1. I guess I should check it out really carefully because it ain't worth a **** because its low mileage

Give me a break, you guys crack me up.

There is a reason people buy low mileage cars otherwise we would all buy high mileage cars and save a boatload of $$.

 

xlr8, i'm with you....about halfway. i don't like either high or low. extra low makes me more nervous that all.

that all aside, if i'm driving whatever mileage car that i love just 1,000 miles a year, i've shortchanged myself, major. but thats just me.

 

In 1999, I bought an '89 with 14K miles. You could tell it was true mileage because the interior looked and smelled new! There were other signs as well. Great records, oil changed every 6 mos at the local dealer. Only 1 minor repair. It was owned by a housewife, who "drove it to the mall on weekends". She had a Ford Explorer as her daily driver. When not it use, it was parked in a heated garage under a light-weight cover.

Since I bought the car, I've increased the annual mileage from 1.4K/yr to 6K/yr. Until this year, the only maintenance has been preventative (except for the backup light switch). It's still garage parked and driven in nice weather.

The car now has 52K on it and finally needs a repair on the heater mixer door and maybe a new starter. It also leaks a little oil from the valve covers. BFD -- many cars have many more problems. Geez, it's 17 years old!

Mine is as close to a "trailer queen" as I could have found and it was the best car I've ever purchased (vette or otherwise). Treat your car right and it will treat you well in return. Some are lemons -- but that really doesn't have much to do with the mileage. They may have been wrecked or may be a statistical anomoly. Or, they may have been driven like there's no tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!

To answer the original question, my formula is to subtract/add an extra $1K for every 10K miles (vs. the "ideal mileage"). That means a car with 100K miles is worth about $9K less than one with 10K miles. It's not a perfect formula, but it's a place to start! (The adjustment price per 10K miles also goes up/down if the cars are really new, really old, or collectible).

 

Yes, but you are forgetting, I drive a Corvette as a daily so I find it silly to crank up the mileage on the car I really love - the Z.

Maybe now that I am picking up another ZR-1, I may drive the Z more often splitting the miles between the 2 Z's and cranking the big mileage on my reg C4.

 

Finally, someone who has a low mileage car that brings something to the conversation. There are tons of people with Vettes with low mileage with no problems whatsoever.

Also, I like your formula, it works pretty good if you think about it except in the areas you mentioned.

 

He's not saying that every low mileage car is a turd, but there is a distinct difference between low mileage and never driven / neglected.

If you so much as start the car every weekend and let it run for 5 minutes and never drive it you'll be doing it a much bigger favor than if you just park it and let it sit and never touch it.

Of course you would ideally want a low mileage car because in general it will have less wear and tear, but just remember that low mileage does NOT automatically mean well maintained.

My brother has a '99 Z-28 that doesn't even have 20k miles on it yet but I know for a fact it's been over a year since he changed his oil, his past oil changes have been well over due, it hasn't run in months and it's been sitting on a flat tire on the rim and he hasn't washed it in 3 years.

Does that sound like the kind of low mileage car you're looking for?

It all boils down to "buyer beware" pure and simple.

 

 

That's not the fault of low miles, that's the fault of extensive, high-performance modifications. If that had been a stock C5 with the same miles, it would have been as reliable as an anvil.

The lower the miles on the car you buy, the more it will cost you, on a per-mile basis, to drive it.

I'm with the 40-50K mile car fans: good depreciation, lots of trouble-free miles left in it.

Larry
code5coupe

 

I don't know for sure if I would agree with that 100% You'd have to look at the types of failures that it has. As much as I may feel that big name tuners are over priced, Lingenfelter does outstanding work and it should have been very reliable. Granted twin turbo's are going to be a little more picky than your typical head / cam setup.

I don't think we have enough information to make judgements in this particular case.

 

Maybe, if anybody thinks to ask. That's all part of it, back to the buyer beware.

His car has some interesting things going on with it. I was with him the day he bought it. This was in 2001, the car was a 1999 with less than 2500 miles on it. It had a cat-back exhaust on it but we didn't examine it extremely closely. We kicked the tires, test drove it, etc, etc. The interior was perfect and the price was amazing.

Well long story short it developed a service engine light before we made it back to Bowling Green, we were only in Nashville. I don't remember what the deal was with that code but we got it resolved at the local dealership under warranty. It then had a faulty ABS sensor that they had to fix under warranty. The instrument cluster would reset itself and loose the TRIP info, too bad it kept the actual mileage. That was replaced under warranty. It developed a leak from the differential, again fixed under warranty. Developed a clogged catalytic converter, again fixed under warranty.

At some point then we started to find the "bubba rigged" stuff. For example his air silencer was filled in with expanding foam. His thermostat fell apart because it had been disassembled and drilled. When we replaced the stereo we found where somebody had drilled a hole through the dash behind the main trim.

All this crap from a car that was perfectly "clean" and came from a dealership! Ultimately his neglect of the car hasn't really ruined it, YET. He doesn't do very regular oil changes, but when he was living at home and I did them I was sure to use Mobil 1 oil so as to buy him a little bit of safety. Now that he has his oil done at a shop I doubt he uses Mobil. If I had the money I would buy the car from him just to keep it from going to complete crap on account of his neglect.

 

Is this the guy in Tampa who blastered the car all over the forum and told everyone how fast it was and then it blew up?

If I remember it correctly, he got a good deal on the car. Sounds like to me the guy put alot of $ into the car, raced the **** out of it and then sold it for a pretty penny (although the deal looked attractive to your buddy) before it blew up.

Happens all the time - a deal is too good to be true - Run

Beat it, Abuse it and Sell it like a Red Headed Step Child

 

A friend of mine bought a brand new 04 Mustang, naturally it wasn't fast enough. He bought a Vortech kit BUT there was a catch, the kit was for a 2003 which did not have electronic fuel pressure management.

The car never ran right and he beat the crap out of it. He had me drive it at the track one night, fine..

I got in the car and went through first gear. In the middle of second I started hearing this horrible rattling noise, WTF? I finally realized what it was, DETONATION! I let off and coasted it through the traps. I told the guy to go home right then and do NOT go wide open throttle until he got that resolved. What did he do? He proceeded to run it about 50 more times that night. The next day he changed the spark plugs and the ground straps were GONE!

He continued to F around with that car for a while until he finally sold it. I imagine it's not running today.

You don't go hammering around on an engine with 300 miles on it, let alone put an un-tuned blower and beat the **** out of it.

 

Like it or not, the big money in Corvettes is in the ridiculously low mileage cars. I live just a few miles from Rogers, and that place is a shrine to the low mileage Corvette. It's clear that there is a real demand for super low mileage cars and that whatever we think about it someone is paying a huge premium for those low miles.

 

This is great...thanks, finally someone has a solution that might have merit. What do you guys think? Other than for the exceptions mentioned is this a pretty good workable formula?

 

That formula by GPenn sounds about as good as any I've seen/heard. I can't vouch for it, but it seems reasonable. Especially the adjustment up or down for newer, older and collectibles. At the extreme, as shown, a $9K difference may not be there, in fact, but it could be. And as said, it's a starting point.

 

Maybe. You know what they're asking, but not what they're getting.

I paid $14K for my 14K mile car in 1999. Most cars (non-vettes) are MORE than that for comparable mileage! Now, if my car had 1,400 hundred miles, I'm sure the price would have been significantly higher. In that regard, you are right on the money! But that's the way even new cars depreciate!

To me a "trailer queen" would be well-kept because it's a show car. At the right price, these should be good cars... There's also some people who have so much money that they buy a "toy" and don't take care of it. Or they lack common sense and/or an understanding of care & maintenance. Many people with money don't need to know what's under the hood. Isn't that the real issue? If the car is well-maintained, low-mileage is better.

The point was made that engines (and car parts) are made to move (i.e., they'll rust, corrode, and varnish if not used). I'm not sure how gaskets fit into that question -- but I don't think it's the big deal some make of it.

The point wasn't made that moving parts wear out. Higher mileage cars will fail sooner simply because parts don't last forever! And, I can't believe that low mileage is being made out as a bad thing! It's all about care and maintenance, care and maintenance, care and maintenance...

 

It all depends on how the car is kept. Mine was low mileage, but in poor mechanical condition from sitting in the weather undriven and uncared for. Of course, I was gullible and couldn't see past the odometer and the shiny Maaco paint. I've since replaced a whole lotta **** on this car! Ignorance is expensive

I still think that given the choice, replacing mechanicals will always be cheaper than replacing the interior if you do the labor yourself.

 

Central Coaster - "You Elitest" , I will have to agree with you on this one!
Cheers!!

 

I does not work for me I start at -$16k

Value of my car Priceless

It is my first Vette one owner who put 80k miles on it the 4 yrs before I bought it.Obviously highway miles.Sure it needed some work and I replaced a lot of the sensors because I wanted to.But it was never beaten to death,you could see that by looking at it although he sort of "let it go" in the end.

Value is in the eye of the beholder.I am sure there are prettier cars out there but this one is mine.And I know everything that won't need replaced.

 

New To Board, But I Have Been Reading For A Few Days
I Have A 95 Pace Car 11,500 Miles
And A 78 Pace Car 6700 Miles
The 95 Got New Oil Pan And Timing Chain Gasket, And They Did The Water Pump At The Same Time Because You Had To Take It Out Anyway
County Corvette About $600"no Other Problems 500 Mile A Year"
Personally I Would Never Buy A High Milage Vette
Resale Stinks, Leather Is Worn, And To Many Little Things Go Wrong
You Get What You Pay For
Had The 95 2 Years, Paid 25 K, I Would Not Sell It For Less Than 32k And That Will Be Rising
Also Why Doesn't Anyone Give 95 Pace Car Its Do, 527 Made And Everyone On This Board Thinks Maybe They Will Be Worth Something
Enjoy This Board Thanks For Response