Advice on buying a 2011 FX35 with 42,000 miles (kinda high)

A

agentdss

Member
Currently looking at and about to possibly buy a Certified Pre-Owned FX35 in Los Angeles. According to CarFax, it is estimated that someone drove this 19,116 miles/yr, which is a lot! The car is in very good shape and looks great overall. Did a thorough test drive and everything seems fine. When I popped the hood after the drive, engine still running, the engine sounds OK, making a little rougher sounding that some other FXs I've looked at.

I've seen a lot of 2011 FX35s with very low mileage, averaging around 20k to 25k miles on them. There was one of those low mileage ones right now to this one, for almost the same price as the 42k miles one, except many more features/packages on the 42k one.

Is there anything I should be concerned about and look into? Other than the mileage, everything else about the car seems great and I'm pretty intense when it comes to nit picking at cars. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!
 
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Thanks for the vote of confidence. I assume that it just had to be highway miles. Also, the car was purchased from the same dealer that it is being sold at now, so not dealing with auctions/wholesales/out of state type worries.

Are there any specific things I should check out on the car that may be issues with high mileage? I come more from a Acura/Honda background, so not sure if I'm missing out when doing my usual checklists.

---------- Post added at 10:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:42 PM ----------

One thing I noticed that under hard braking during the test drive, that the car kinda veered to one direction slightly (either left or right I don't remember). The sales person also noticed and I mentioned it may need an alignment, is that correct or is that from a different issue? Right after a decent powerful test drive, I noticed there was some crackling sound coming from center of bottom of the car, likely the exhaust / heat shield. It went on for a bit once the car was off and eventually quieted down.
 
I'm not really familiar with 2nd generation FX's, big plus that it was bought from the same dealership.

PS There is nothing wrong getting a car form an auction. All dealers(including dealerships like Infiniti, Nissan etc) all over US are selling and buying cars at auctions.
 
Good to know, this is my first ever used car purchase so I'm a bit overly cautious. I also noticed there were chrome side vents on the car as opposed to the typical silver plastic. Wondering if someone bought the ones for the FX50 and put them on. Looks good but didn't think it was a dealership accessory or maybe it is.
 
I'd prefer that car to a lower mileage car. It probably wasn't a lease. Since it was a purchase, the owner probably actually changed the oil every once in awhile!!
 
According to CarFax, it was a personal lease, lasted 2 years, 3 months. It has records on CarFax of regular service at this same dealer up until 21k miles. After that there are no records for the remaining 20,000 more miles. Sales person claims this person *may* have had a service contract and once that was over, this person may have had it serviced elsewhere with no records on CarFax.....
 
on LA streets with that mileage the suspension bushings will feel worn. Another 10k miles time to replace those shocks.

---------- Post added at 11:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:43 PM ----------

and the part that it was a lease is a deal breaker for me. Unless you knew the prior owner id say walk away. You dont know how to person treated the car.
 
Have the salesman check the infiniti database - it will contain a complete service history - maybe it was serviced at another infiniti dealer who didn't report to carfax. If that doesn't show any service beyond what you see on carfax then that would be a red flag for me. Alot of times people fall out of love with a lease and get lax on servicing. No oil changes for 20,000 miles would definitely fry that engine. If you decide to buy the car, purchase the wrap infinti elite warranty - it goes way beyond the cpo warranty which is really only on the drivetrain.
 
No...dont purcahse the extended warranty. If you love the car and cant get confirmation on the service history, have them throw that in for peace of mind. If not then, yeah...lease with no service history...I'd rather buy a new Hyundai. :)
 
Update:

They emailed me new service records that account for the ones not listed on CarFax. Is it odd that CarFax would not include these service records, even though it has the first 20K of service records on there, but not the last 20k of them? All service was done at the same place. Hoping there is no chance that this Infiniti dealer simply "faked" these new records, as the whole history was sent to me in a PDF of a computer printout.

Also, I notice that most Infiniti Certified cars are listed "as for sale as certified preowned" on CarFaxes, but this one doesn't. Also on the Infiniti dealer's site, the car is listed under pre-owned, not certified preowned. They claim this is ceritifed, has the extra warranty, and showed me a CPO checklist and what they did service wise to make it up to spec.

Still haven't bought the car, but strongly thinking about it.

---------- Post added at 02:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:48 PM ----------

Update 2:

They said it was originally not certified when uploaded to website. They said Infiniti wanted them to have more certified on their lot, so they then went ahead and certified this car. Still, there is not notice of this on their website or CarFax.
 
Sounds like it has a solid history then. Good luck and make sure the receipt states CPO and you'll be golden.

Sent from my Nexus 7
 
That's a gamble with buying a used car. Sometimes not all service records are uploaded to CARFAX. If all the service has been done at Infiniti, then you are gtg. Did you get the "rougher sounding issue addressed"?
 
I wouldn't put too much faith in what the carfax says. Who knows exactly when and how carfax collects data. If the infiniti maintenance records look good and its got the cpo warranty then i'd feel pretty comfortable. As far as the dealer falsifying the maintenance records- I doubt it. Take a close look at the dates and mileage and what was serviced, you can usually tell when somethings been dummied up.
Again - check out the cpo wrap warranty vs what included in the standard cpo.
 
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