Hi everyone, I am new here so I hope I am posting in the right place. I am looking at buying a S2000 and need help. The mileage on the car is 39k, the current owner bought it when it had 20,700 miles. The problem is, when she bought it and registered it, the mileage was misreported on the title and instead of 20.7k miles was reported as 200k miles. I ran the car fax and they also show the car as 200k miles. The woman selling it is in the process of getting the mileage corrected, so here are my questions on how this may effects resale value: Will the mileage now be reported as “exempt” on the title? Will carfax be able to make this mileage correction on their reports? What is the process like with getting the mileage on the title corrected, should I expect this to take months? I want to be sure I’m not buying a car that will be worth less in the future because of a simple mistake at the DMV when recording the mileage.

 

I'd probably keep looking, unless there's something particularly unique about this car. Buyer beware. Mileage could also be changed due to an ecu/motor swap. Any issues you see today will still be there when you sell the car down the road, even if the seller convinces you its an OK buy. The title might be able to be corrected, but carfax will probably indicate a mileage disparity forever.

 

A lot of us buy these cars to keep forever, so we're less worried about resale value.

Also this is a car that attracts very informed and aware buyers. Its also a somewhat rare car, so there are not a lot of choices when we're looking to buy. For these reasons, we're more likely to understand such an error can occur, and believe other evidence (cars condition, etc) that it really is a simple paperwork error.

On the other side of that coin, we also want to feel the car we're buying is perfect. So something like this may not make us worried there is something fishy going on, but it may leave a bad taste that there is an imperfection.

Personally I wouldn't hesitate to buy ot of it met all my other wants.

 

Carfax should be able to correct the error. Just need to show them documented evidence. When I bought my GTR, it stated the car was serviced in another state with 20k more miles. The car was always in Cali and the previous owner had service records during the same time period showing the correct mileage. He called carfax and had the info corrected before I bought the car.

 

You need to look at your needs and decide if this car fits those. If your planning on reselling it before it looses a substantial amount of value, then this probably isn't the car for you. If you plan on keeping it forever unless something like divorce forces you to sell, then who cares.