wburns

I wrote earlier about a used 2002 S4 that I was looking at. I just ran a carfax report on it and it noted that the car was a lease vehicle. The car went into service on 12/12/01 and then was sold at an auto auction later (just recently according to the dealer). The date was not listed but it has only been 1 year and 4 months since the car was leased.

Wouldn't someone have "taken a bath" by doing this? What other reasons would cause this to occur? The carfax came back clean I just am trying to determine if there might be other problems that carfax doesn't report. I'm going to get a full dealer service report but don't have that yet.

Overall the S4 looked good, could be a little cleaner and a couple of light scratches to buff out.

- Bill

NASA racer

there are hardly any cars 1 year old that a dealer can't sell and make some money on.

Definitely get the full service history.

Tomasz@Startup

Hmm, would CarFax show if the car has been stolen?

Ryan in T.O.

I dumped my leased 328ci after 13 months. I sold it back to the dealership. For all I know, the dealership turned around and put it on the auction block. BTW, I didn't 'take a bath' when I did it either. People get out of leases early for all kinds of reasons.

If the car is an 02, you have almost 4 years of remaining full warranty and maintenance and probably an additional 2 years of Audi Assured since the car is used. If the car is sound, then buy it.

The only thing I would watch out for is if the car was a lemon buy-back. But I don't know how you would go about finding this out.

--RGL

NASA racer

but they turned around and sold it...they didn't auction it.

Tomasz@Startup

what is a lemon, a car that the dealer can not figure out how to fix. Once bought, it goes to a garage where the factory techs work on it and eventually fix it. Buying such a car may not be a bad thing... Assuming that the factory tech know thier sh.t.

Ryan in T.O.

but without knowing the exact circumstances of why the car was returned and why the dealer then auctioned the car, we are making largely blind assumptions about motives.

The point of my post was to suggest that one should not assume the worst. I agree that wburns needs to be careful and check out the car but should not automatically dismiss the opportunity because it is a lease return that was auctioned off.

--RGL

Autop-Z

Dealer told me that a lady leased it for 3 years, drove it for 1.5 years, saw another car that she just HAD to have, so turned the leased car in early. He told me that she really did take a bath, but it was her decision to do so. I got the car from the dealer for a very good price, I'm pretty sure because he had already made lots of money on the car.

Never know what someone's motivation might be for turning a car in. Just check out the car thoroughly and if you like it, buy it.

NASA racer

it's a car they COULDN'T fix in a reasonable amount of time or number of tries.