dmleonard
New LVC Member
Hello - This is my first post here, so tia to anyone who can offer up advice.
My father-in-law buys a new car every 4-5 years and trades in his old one. He buys them new and runs them up to 100k. He is borderline OCD with his vehicles and everything he owns looks brand new. I follow him down and whenever he trades his vehicles in, I just give him what the trade in value is plus what he loses on sales tax from me buying it.
I currently have his last car, an 02 Pontiac Bonneville SSEi. It's been a very good car to me. Now he has an 05 Lincoln LSE . It's a beautiful black car and looks like the day it rolled off the showroom floor. He will be trading it in on a Cadillac CTS-V and asked me if I wanted to buy this car as well. I am extremely interested as he bought this car because he really liked the 03 LS they bought for my mother-in-law. They had a lot of transmission problems with that car and wouldn't sell it to any relatives/friends, but they only got $3500 for it on a trade in and the thought of picking up his LSE for around that is really enticing.
He is trying to be upfront with me and said he can't get it in and out of the shop for under $1,000. I do 95% of my own work, so I know I could save there, but I don't know anything about these cars: Reliability, Parts Costs, ease to work on, etc. About all I know is that they share their platform with Jaguar and I have heard bad things about the reliability of Jaguars.
The things he has fixed: 1) Auxiliary water pump 2) Front transmission seal & pump 3) Valve cover gaskets and 2 coils 4) HCCV. He said he is going replace the timing belt if I buy it as he heard from the dealer it went out the LS they traded off shorty after someone bought it and he doesn't want that to happen to me.
So long story short - Are there any other common problems with these cars that I could expect to hit after 100k? I totally understand that with the higher mileage, I will have to fix stuff from time to time. Are their big ticket items that would make it worth buying an extended warranty for? Basically, I am trying to figure out if this is worth buying. The Bonneville seems to throw something my way about once a year, but the worst has been the radiator for $200. I'm just concerned that this thing could $500-$1000 me to death. I've done that once before and don't have any desire to go there again.
Thanks again.
My father-in-law buys a new car every 4-5 years and trades in his old one. He buys them new and runs them up to 100k. He is borderline OCD with his vehicles and everything he owns looks brand new. I follow him down and whenever he trades his vehicles in, I just give him what the trade in value is plus what he loses on sales tax from me buying it.
I currently have his last car, an 02 Pontiac Bonneville SSEi. It's been a very good car to me. Now he has an 05 Lincoln LSE . It's a beautiful black car and looks like the day it rolled off the showroom floor. He will be trading it in on a Cadillac CTS-V and asked me if I wanted to buy this car as well. I am extremely interested as he bought this car because he really liked the 03 LS they bought for my mother-in-law. They had a lot of transmission problems with that car and wouldn't sell it to any relatives/friends, but they only got $3500 for it on a trade in and the thought of picking up his LSE for around that is really enticing.
He is trying to be upfront with me and said he can't get it in and out of the shop for under $1,000. I do 95% of my own work, so I know I could save there, but I don't know anything about these cars: Reliability, Parts Costs, ease to work on, etc. About all I know is that they share their platform with Jaguar and I have heard bad things about the reliability of Jaguars.
The things he has fixed: 1) Auxiliary water pump 2) Front transmission seal & pump 3) Valve cover gaskets and 2 coils 4) HCCV. He said he is going replace the timing belt if I buy it as he heard from the dealer it went out the LS they traded off shorty after someone bought it and he doesn't want that to happen to me.
So long story short - Are there any other common problems with these cars that I could expect to hit after 100k? I totally understand that with the higher mileage, I will have to fix stuff from time to time. Are their big ticket items that would make it worth buying an extended warranty for? Basically, I am trying to figure out if this is worth buying. The Bonneville seems to throw something my way about once a year, but the worst has been the radiator for $200. I'm just concerned that this thing could $500-$1000 me to death. I've done that once before and don't have any desire to go there again.
Thanks again.