Miata owners - please tell me what I should know about Miatas?

[Anonymous]

Looking at a 2008 tomorrow, 85k miles. It will be a toy essentially. But I’d love to hear things to be on the lookout for.

TIA

[Anonymous]

Those are fun and reliable for the most part but if you haven’t bought a used car before and don’t know what to look for it is best to get a ppi. When I was looking for a used Miata a few years ago I brought an obd scanner with me. Several cars including one from a reputable dealership had their codes purposefully cleared so that they don’t show check engine light but the scanner detected that. Almost every car I looked at had some issues. I definitely tried to avoid those with leaks and engine codes.

[Anonymous]

Pay to get the Carfax. It's great if it's mostly clear of problems but be suspicious it it is mostly blank.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pay to get the Carfax. It's great if it's mostly clear of problems but be suspicious it it is mostly blank.

Carfax only shows accident history and any available maintenance records. Beyond that it’s useless to tell you anything about whether a car is decent or not. It’s basically “used vehicles for dummies”. You can tell a lot more in 5 minutes with the car.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pay to get the Carfax. It's great if it's mostly clear of problems but be suspicious it it is mostly blank.

Carfax only shows accident history and any available maintenance records. Beyond that it’s useless to tell you anything about whether a car is decent or not. It’s basically “used vehicles for dummies”. You can tell a lot more in 5 minutes with the car.

You don’t want to spend 5 min with a car that was flooded or had a big accident. You use Carfax to filter cars that you actually want to see

[Anonymous]

Tiny trunk, big blind spots. I loved how the Miata looked but the low visibility through reaper windshield and tiny trunk stopped me at the last minute from going through with the purchase.