How to buy a second-hand car?

A year back I was suddenly smitten with love for cars and began to ogle at every 4-wheeler on the road. I also did lots of research on how to buy a second-hand car.

Reproduced below is a piece of gyan that I got from a colleague (CP Ramki) on the issues that we need to be careful about when checking a second hand car out:

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It is always recommended to buy from a certified place like True Value or Automart. You’ll end up paying about 10-25k extra (depending on the car you buy) but I’ve seen it’s worth it. A few additional things you might want to check are:

- Check the RC book for the correct ownership. Sometimes it so happens that the car might be company leased car which gets transferred to the individual after the lease period completion. In this case, even though the car is a single user car the RC book will show two names. It usually says “Change of name” or something like that. This is ok but some people might complain about it when you try to sell your car later on.

- Check for valid insurance.

- If you are buying from a certified place like automart/true value, no need to worry about the engine; and they’ll also be accident free cars. One thing you might want to do is: check for rusting on the underside of the car. Check for rusting/welding of the silencer pipe. Silencer pipe is typically made of three sections (or two) but whatever…do check all sections for welding or rusting. That would indicate that you might have to spend money on the silencer parts sometime down the line. So you can negotiate on that.

- Check the condition of tires. If they are not new, you can negotiate on that.

- Check the condition of the drive shafts. We cannot actually check these from a mechanic’s eye but this is something which you can do. When you go for the test drive, take the car to a place where you can turn full 360 degrees. Then turn the steering completely to the left being stationary, and then do one full circle. Same for the right and if possible reverse. If you hear any sound (duh-duh-duh…or gad-gad-gad like rattling :)) during any of these turns, it will indicate a worn out or broken drive shaft. This sound is there only when you make tight turns so unless you do that you wouldn’t know

- If you are buying a car with A/C, then you might want to check the A/C for proper functioning.

- Check the music system for proper functioning. This is again not an essential but something on which you can negotiate the price ;)

- If you are looking to sell you car in a couple of years then go for a brand which has good re-sale. Honda and Maruti have a good re-sale value but Ford, Daewoo and Fiat don’t have much.

- If you are looking to own the car for a while, then go for a car which has not done more than 25,000 KMS (30,000 max). Also check the service records if possible to see whether the owner has been getting the car serviced regularly.

This is all I guess. Happy shopping!

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To begin your online research, visit:

team-bhp: A very active web-forum on cars. Trust me you would love to go through these discussions


To estimate prices of cars:

carwale helps in estimating a fair price for the deal you have in mind: very useful tool, near accurate


Some online resources you would like to see before checking a specific car out:

An article on The Hindu

Maruti's used-car buying guide

Apart from this, check out EVERY SINGLE website on used cars that you can lay your eyes on. Every bit of info you pick up can help you in your negotiations :)

And of course, one standard tip is: Take a reliable mechanic along with you to evaluate the car on offer (just in case you miss something)

If you have anything more to add, do use the comments section!