It's been a while since I've seen this, but it used to be that you'd see cars with dealer plates clamped on and at that time, dealer workers were allowed to drive cars to and from their home. I have no idea if that still happens but that could explain why. Workers used to talk about how they got to drive X car home, etc.

Not for me. I once was sitting down finalizing the paperwork and they said the car had 196 miles on the odometer. I said that makes it a used car, I want a greater discount. They said no, so I walked.

That's either a lotta test drives or someone had already bought it and returned it after a couple days.

I found the same car at a different dealership a couple days later for a better price.

The last car I bought was a Subaru and in order to get the color/options I wanted, it was transferred from a dealer 150 miles away. It had about 200 miles total on it.

Anonymous wrote:Noticed after I drove away that it had roughly 200 miles on it.

No one else surprised that the OP didn't notice this until driving away? Did you even read the paperwork you were signing? The mileage was recorded all over the paperwork. I bet you didn't match/verify the VIN either, did you?

Having said that, 200 miles is no big deal.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depends on the car. A Honda or Toyota should typically have less than 50 miles. Most of the ones I've bought have less than 10. Anything above 50 miles would seems excessive to me. I probably wouldn't buy a car with 200 miles unless I had no choice and was given a very big discount.

Why would you expect Toyotas or Hondas to have fewer miles than other cars. The reason new cars have some milage -- test drives, dealer transfers -- would apply just as much to these brands as any other, no?

There is some variation in how different manufacturers distribute cars. Subaru had (or used to have) an odd system where they just distributed cars at random to dealers (obviously not totally random--I'm sure someone at Subaru was crunching numbers to determine how many and of which package various dealers should get). But the dealers could not order cars in particular colors or packages--they just had to wait to see what came off the boat for them, and while they could sometimes trade with other dealers while the cars were in transit, most of the trading happened on the ground and was influenced heavily by individual relationships between dealerships. Not sure if this is how they still do things--we bought ours a few years ago--but it meant their cars were more likely to have more than a few miles on them if they had bounced around to a couple of dealers in swaps. I know there are some carmakers that allow dealers to order specific cars, and I assume those arrive with almost no miles on them.

Anonymous wrote:Depends on the car. A Honda or Toyota should typically have less than 50 miles. Most of the ones I've bought have less than 10. Anything above 50 miles would seems excessive to me. I probably wouldn't buy a car with 200 miles unless I had no choice and was given a very big discount.

Why would you expect Toyotas or Hondas to have fewer miles than other cars. The reason new cars have some milage -- test drives, dealer transfers -- would apply just as much to these brands as any other, no?

My subaru had 6 miles on it which I think is abnormally low but 200 seems a bit high

Yes mine had 218.

That seems like to Mich mileage for a new car. I bought a new car in April that had 19 miles on it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP - did they have to bring the car from a different dealer? Sometimes they drive it over.

+1 Dealer transfers within about 100 miles usually happen just by driving the vehicle, especially if they are swapping the car for another one (different color or package that they need).

I met someone whose job was to drive cars between dealerships in this region.

Mine had 250 on it. It had been a dealer transfer, on the lot for 9+ months, and I got it for 18% off msrp. All in all, felt like I was compensated for the extra mileage.

Anonymous wrote:OP - did they have to bring the car from a different dealer? Sometimes they drive it over.

+1 Dealer transfers within about 100 miles usually happen just by driving the vehicle, especially if they are swapping the car for another one (different color or package that they need).

The argument is 200 miles is not considered NEW anymore. It's been used quite a bit.

This is really splitting hairs. Some of you want a discount on a car for 200 miles that will be fully functional for at least 200k?!

That would like a 0.1% discount if you straightlined dollars per mile - or $60 on a $60k car.

They usually drive from different dealerships, OP. Truck service doesn't happen all the time. Our new car was driven by the dealer from another state.