Hey all, I'm (hopefully) a soon-to-be owner of an early C4 and have been in the search for a few months now. Found a car a couple hours away that looked pretty good but with work and the local mechanics around the car's hours, I went to take a look armed with the excellent pre-purchase inspection list linked here on the forums. For the most part it checked out, and the test drive was quite smooth, with no odd behaviors or noises during city 10-30mph driving and highway 50-80mph driving. Got about 10 min of drive time each on local roads and freeways. There were a few things I wasn't sure about, and after negotiating, the seller and I came to 9000 as a hard number for them. I'm hoping the experience on these forums can give me a hand with some of my concerns and help me decide if they're legitimately issues or just misunderstandings on my part! Thanks for any help!

Some details about the car: it's being sold as part of an estate sale, was garaged and mostly undriven for a few years, although seller said it was serviced during that period. 1989 C4, ~70k miles, regular servicing per the Carfax, no other records beyond that.

From the inspection I did, following the guide: visually the car is in pretty good shape - tiny paint nicks throughout, particularly in the front bumper and around the door edges. Weatherstripping will need a full replacement. Small scratch on the acrylic top, missing front license plate filler. Tires look good, fluids looked fine (the car had its oil and oil filter changed recently, as well as fuel pump and headlight motor). It was my first time navigating an engine bay so other than taking out the air filter and the valve on the engine, I did all the checks from the guide and they seemed to check out with 2 exceptions:

• On the 2nd engine start, there was a small puff of white smoke, which the guide said, "indicates problems with either the piston rings, the valve guides or both". It was a very warm day, so unlikely to be condensation, but I didn't see any more smoke coming out past the initial puff.
• Once it warmed up, I felt the exhaust pressure and while there was consistently some amount of pressure, it was not "smooth, almost continuous pressure". There was clear pulsation, although always some amount of pressure. I checked this multiple times, before and after the test drive, and it was the same throughout. According to the guide, this should be a sign of low compression, but as far as I can find, I should have noticed issues in the test drive if that was the case. The car accelerated smoothly from 10-30 and braking, or 20-70 onto the freeway and then staying at that speed, no weird noises, no knocking or any issues with starting up. I also compared to my friend's Miata who drove down with me, and it seemed to be similar in how the exhaust pressure was pulsing so I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding the guide here or I should tell him to visit the shop .

Othe than that, there wasn't anything else that didn't check out against the list except the windshield washer switch, which moved the wipers but didn't send out any fluid, and the radio. where the antenna operates fine but the radio just serves static. Since the wipers worked, I think I might just need to add washer fluid, but I wasn't able to check that completely. The radio is a component I would replace anyway so I'm not particularly concerned with that. I also wasn't able to get the car on a lift, but the Carfax doesn't report any accidents or damage.

Is the exhaust thing a real problem? Is 9K a good deal for this car otherwise? Any advice would be appreciated!

 

Please post more details on the car!

Pics showing condition of paint, interior, engine bay etc.

At first glance $9k for a 70k mile 1989 is pretty fair. Is it a manual or auto? Is it the color combo you want?