Buying a second hand Tarago - How many Km is normal?

[marthamay]

Hello, I'm a wannabe Tarago owner! Any advice from owners would be very welcome.

We have been looking for about three weeks now (in Melbourne) at second hand Taragos with a budget of around $5000-$10000. This means we are looking at Taragos from the 90's. Nearly all the ones we have seen have between 200 - 300000 km on the odometer. Seems like the advice going around is NOT to buy a car with that many km. Does that mean all these Taragos we are seeing are really bad value and we shouldn't be looking at them? I am wondering how many Km a well cared for, regularly serviced Tarago should live on for. Has anybody got any ideas about this? Neither my husband nor myself are very mechanically savvy!

Our only other possible option is to stretch the budget and go for a Japanese Estima instead as they seem to come with very low mileage for around 15000. I'm not quite so keen on spending this much BUT is it a false economy to go for an older and cheaper car???

Any advice much appreciated.

Thanks

[vbmds]

Hi there,

Good question!

We have just bought a '99 Tarago in Victoria and also asked the same question regarding mileage. The answer we got from the Mechanics we asked was that Toyota's are a good vehicle overall and mileage is not as important a consideration than for other makes. The consensus was that a vehicle with mileage above 350K km was not a wise buy as it will probably need major money spent on it.

We thus looked at vehicles with mileage no greater than 250K km so as to give us time before reaching the 320K-350K mark. We also tried to limit ourselves to car yards as well - warrenties etc. The mileage limit we set cut out almost all the car yard vehicles on offer...but not all.

Of course low mileage needs to be matched by overall vehicle condition...the one we bought for $9500 has good mileage for the age but the body was a little bit rough though...so temper your expectations...

Hope this helps; at least a little ^_^

[marthamay]

Thanks so much for your reply - that's really useful information.

How many years use are you hoping to get from your 99 Tarago?

We currently have a forerunner which is a 99 Tarago GLi for $8999 from a woman (2nd owner) who has had it for the last 10 years. It's done 274000 km. She seems to have pretty immaculate service records and the inside of the car is beautifully kept - but of course it's really hard to tell as I just don't know what to look out for in a car of this type/age/mileage. Your decision to go through a dealer is very sensible (becuase of the warranty) and makes me think twice about buying privately. I hope you are enjoying your car.

[vbmds]

We are fairly low mileage drivers - last vehicle we had before the Tarago was averaging a little under 10K km per year, so with our Tarago having around 160K on the clock, we are expecting to have it for quite a few years...a house is next on the list of things so we're not looking to change vehicle any time soon ^_^

Depending on how many Kms you intend to be doing, the 350K mark may come around quite quickly - 3 years at 25K per year; which is the national average I think, then you may be in for some serious financially taxing maintenance decisions, or you may not...

Buying Privately; make sure that the vehicle comes with a current RWC...at the absolute minimum. Getting a mechanic you trust to do a pre-purchase inspection is also a very good idea - better to play them a little bit rather than buying something you'll curse later on.

A simple way to tell if the vehicle has had body work done, especially a cheap job, is to hold a magnet in you hand close to the body. If the magnet stops pulling toward the body anywhere then its a sign of a lot of 'bog' being used in that area - damage has been covered over rather than fixing it, and or there is rust in that area. Its not a full proof method but it can give you some piece of mind that the vehicle is probably ok under the paint.

If you want to go with a car yard, we had two Tarago's on our short list - the 1 we bought and a '97 Estima (Japanese version Tarago) with ~240K on the clock. I came across it searching on google for "tarago estima melbourne". If you can't find it, I can see if I can dig up a link for you and post it in this thread.

As for enjoying our one, not yet...the Car Yard is still detailing it...last time I inquired it was still at the Panel Beaters...so hopefully it won't be as rough as when last I saw it ^_^