Buying a car interstate?

[dwarfmarine]

Hi Guys, As you may know my Legnum is up for sale.

New car is probably going to be a 2.5TD Discovery (for towing and mild offroad purposes)

However, theres no nice ones in NSW,

Have any of you bought cars interstate before?
Is it pretty much a case of risk it to fly down, if its good, drive it back.
and if its shit just fly back again?

(i understand with the Rego its a case of let it run out/de-reg and get a refund then blue-slip and register for NSW)

Any pointers for buying interstate would be much appreciated!

Cheers, Cameron

 

[Guest]

Few tips but it's like buying a car from anywhere.
Do a revs checks
Get an inspection
Ask for lots of photos say 20
Ask about all services and any repairs
Any damage or anything that may need repairing or replacing anytime soon
See if anyone you know lives close that could check it out for you.

Basically if your flying down your at the stage your going to buy it unless there is something major wrong

 

[dwarfmarine]

Yeah, I know the basics of buying a car that you listed,
And I guess you're right about 'flying down if you're commited'

Unfortunately there's none for sale in NSW that I can even check out to get a feel for
(In saying that I was committed to a Legnum before actually viewing one)

Luckily, a place 10mins down the road from me is a Land rover specialist, (what Steve is to VR4s) so I guess it won't hurt to pop in and ask them some questions...

 

[fieldy107]

What state are you buying from?

If it isn't to inconvenient or too far away, the best thing you can do for peace of mind is go see the car for yourself and drive it home. Even in this case it is a good idea to have a thorough mechanical check from someone like MTA (nsw) or RACV (qld).
Sometimes the car is too far away for you to drive it back (depends on how far your willing to drive I guess) or if you are simply to busy with work and everything else, there is the option to buy from a dealer who is willing to deliver.
Probably the best experience I have had buying a car is when I bought my Colt, I seen it on the net and it was located in Sydney. The price and kilometers were better than anything else in Australia but I could not make it to Sydney, so I had MTA inspect it (cost somewhere around $300). They were very thorough and send me loads of pictures and details. The inspection showed the car was like new so I bought it and the dealer arranged delivery. I was expecting it to be delivered by truck so I asked the dealer the question "what happens if the car gets damaged on the truck? should I arrange insurance on the car before it gets delivered?", to my surprise he told me it was not coming on a truck but was actually being driven for 8-9 hours from Sydney to my house and the car was not mine until it arrived and I signed the transfer form. So if anything happened to it in transit the dealer would have to wear it.
In retrospect if the dealer was a scammer (which I had nothing to suggest he was not) I could possibly have been screwed over, but fortunately the car arrived on time and was just as good as I was hoping.

Hope that helps a bit.

 

[dwarfmarine]

Yeah it does,
There's a couple of nice examples in both Bris and a good modded example in Vic

I'm limiting my search to both those states so i can just drive it back again

 

[Poita]

I recently bought a Pajero from Sydney.

Got all the standard checks done on it for finance, stolen, written off, owner history etc.
Then rang Steve from TME who put me onto a good 4wd mechanic. Arranged for the owner to drive it there (not all owners may be happy to do this) and he emailed me a report on it.

Only then did I fly over to have a look. Overall quite happy with the purchase!