It’s routine to see Toyota’s or Holden’s with 300,000km down the cheap end of Gumtree, but extremely rare to see a modern (say, post 1995) euro car with this many kms.
And there are Mercedes and Audis with 150,000km selling for $7000.
What kills these euro vehicles before they get higher mileage?
This
yeah less popular, less parts, further to get over here, less after market, prestige, badge tax
second this….. cost of repair when things fail.
Can confirm , some dope put in aftermarket headlight bulbs in my car when i bought it (VW Golf) with too high wattage and literally…burnt the entire wiring throughout the sealed housing on a BI-Xenon self leveling headlight unit.
I had to buy x2 second-hand headlight housing with the wiring intact at $380 each (i was quoted at $500+ each at some places) , on top of that supercheap auto wanted $125 for a xenon bulb to fit into the housing. i said fk that and went to powerbulbs and got myself a set for $50 delivered.
If this were any other car i would have only paid $30-40 for a set of regular bulbs and i probably would of found the headlight housing at half the price.
I swear i am going to have a heart-attack once the DSG goes in my golf because nobody wants to know how much that's going to cost , but 160,000km's on the clock and still going strong (because i had half a brain to regularly change the transmission oil unlike most people)
Wanna know how much it costs just to get a DSG transmission oil change , $500 from Volkswagen themselves. Transmission oil….nothing else.
if it has a haldex system dont forget to service that aswell
Thanks Gumbo , yeah i did them both at the same time. it shifts gears completely smoothly and goes into gear no drama but it still jerks from time to time taking off / slow speed. i think its just the characteristic of the gearbox being its a semi-automatic. definitely would go mad if i were in constant stop-go traffic , i would probably opt for a true automatic or even a CVT at that point.
I also drop it in sport-mode when i get in slow crawl traffic so it doesn't do the 1-3 dance constantly to mess up the box.
Aussie climate, Europe milder weather.
That's an oft-touted myth I think.
Have you ever been to Italy or Spain in summer? It's as hot as 99% of places here. Not to mention how much colder it gets in EU.
Unless you're taking your Autobahn Legend out into the outback midsummer, it's not anything that you wouldn't see in Europe.
Absolutely. Inland Europe ( and a lot of Europe is inland) can happily do -20 in winter and +40 in summer. Australia's "harsh" climate is an overstatement.
everything
Usually the newish cars selling for sub $8k are scams. The city im in there is a big surge of them. All scams. $8k is obviously a sweet spot for people just EFTing money to scammers without much due diligence.
Or they are due for some expensive repairs or servicing…
Gumtree, good to be true bargain Toyota's with lower KM are scams. No Service history, VIN number comes as write-off most of the time.
Basically the 'australia tax' kills off euro cars from being 'everyday' affordable
Really, isn’t that “tax” on all imported cars?
Which is All cars now.
I think you are mixing this up with the Euro Taxi which is the one, where idiots believe a euro public conveyance is a luxury car because it’s got a fancy logo on its bonnet.
No…
It just costs more to ship things from europe than asia
No…
They just charge heaps more in Australia because they can get away with it.
Not really, they come via the sea. A bit more, not that much more.
Small market - would you buy a 300,000km+ Euro?
personally i would not buy a 300,000km anything
i might be tempted if the car was a popular and generally reliable sports car of sorts , but i would only do so under the proviso it had regular service intervals and had transmission oil serviced as well as timing chain/timing belt replaced.
at the end of the day buying something upwards of 200,000km it all comes down to how much money are you willing to sink into it after you own it for a few months and discover whats wrong with it , there is ALWAYS multiple things wrong with second hand cars , some the owners blatantly lie to you about , some they don't even know which is not a rare occurrence.
Most cars that have been looked after even bare minimally with regular engine oil and filter change can usually last up to 200,000km before things start to really go wrong , so other key components undertaken in Major Service intervals are the most important when looking at older cars.
More plastic parts in euro models compared to asian cars
Poking around trying to answer my own question, I see there are more higher mileage examples on Carsales. Maybe the type of person who has owned a euro car is less likely to use gumtree, even if they are selling it for $3000.
And I suppose a $3000 my02 Audi has comparatively expensive parts for all the little things that wear out.
They kill themselves 😂
With Euro cars, they make them basically out of old cheese and dried bread sticks. There is very little that is premium about the average Euro trashwagon. The whole “Euro = premium” is a marketing strategy that paid off. Koreans and Japanese have much better quality vehicles with much more tech in them using better quality components and do it all for a fraction of an equivalent Euro shitbox.
Toyota, Mazda, Honda, Hyundai and the like are also built to a different mind set. The Japanese and Koreans have a different thought process to their manufacturing. It’s considered shameful if you build something and it is a turd. Their pride is in their quality. They don’t like to lose face… Germans and French have the approach of, we tell them what is good, and if they don’t like it, well, (fropanity) them, what do they know.
The biggest issue is cost to repair. A Toyota is relatively cheap to repair. Parts are well engineered, easy to access and cheap. By contrast, Euro parts are expensive, made out of unobtanium and cheese and much harder to come by. That, coupled with extortionist labour prices means that Euro vehicles seldom get the attention they require to keep them running.
Asians do it better. And no I don’t have Asian fetish.
100% lack of parts. There are plenty of old European cars that still run but with time and kms comes the breakdown of all parts (interior, exterior, suspension etc.). At this point it's too hard to fix them up and so they are more likely to end up at the dump.
Exactly, and less on road originally means less secondhand parts.
This gets compounded by costs of holding spares by importer of the Euro car as volumes arent there.
Added to this is source of cheap parts like low mileage engines etc from Japan for Japanese manufacturers cars - eg Engines gearboxes, which arent available for Euro cars.
Second hand parts can be false economy - if they're manufactured at about the same time as the failed part, what makes you think a second hand one won't konk out anytime soon? The only scenario that might be worth a gamble is on high value, low labour to install parts.
Sure second hand is a bit of a gamble, but for old, low value cars they are a reasonable source of cheap repair items. Many second hand parts can be inspected well enough to have a fair idea if they are beyond service.
Low km Second hand engines are often a good alternative when your car blows up, especially if you have a Japanese model.
The cost to fix anything that goes wrong with them.