Previous Owners

[Crafty1980]

It's a simple question that has always puzzled me:

Why do people seem so concerned about the number of previous owners a car has had? Surely other things about a car (maintenance history etc) are far more important in the whole scheme of things?!

[Crafty1980]

I can completely understand where Andy-xr is coming from. If you've got a young car with lots of owners then you have to ask yourself the question as to why people aren't keeping it.

But what if the car you're trying to buy/sell is 10yrs old, low mileage, and had 5 owners... The low mileage would stand to reason that the car hasn't been driven much more than the weekends/special days only, and in the course of 10yrs, 5 owners isn't unreasonable for such a car is it? It could be seen as an average of 1 owner every 2yrs which, to me, doesn't seem that bad!

Personally I would be far more concerned with not seeing a decent service history or indeed any history (receipts etc) with the car rather than how many owners its had.

[Crafty1980]

Yes but there's used and "used"

[Crafty1980]

Howard- said:

Because as a car gets older, the fewer owners the car has had, the more valuable the car has been to each owner.

Someone who paid £30,000 for a BMW 3 series and kept it for 10 years is going to treat it like a £30,000 car. If that person instead sells it after 5 years to someone for, I dunno, £10k, then the new owner sells it a few years later for £4k, then it's a £4k car to the third owner. A cheap car by all accounts. That means they will try to justify cheaper tyres, less rigorous servicing, less rigorous finding and fixing of problems that may arise...

I see where you're coming from with this angle. It's a valid point to make too. But what happens if owner 3 decides that he loves that car and wants to make sure it's as good as it could be (even if owner 2 had ragged it about a bit). So he/she decides to spend a ton of cash reparing/replacing/fixing everything possible to make it a better car... Would you still treat it as a terrible 3 owner car? I guess all cases are different. Interesting responses though!