Ok, so I've posted a few times about my currently ongoing plan to buy a G35 coupe here to replace my soon-to-be-expired lease, and I believe I've sort of cleared the next hurdle in the process. I've also got another question or two that I would love to get some insight on in regards to purchasing the vehicle.

Currently, I've been trying to assess what my insurance is going to run me if I step up to the G, and I've finally gotten some decent (to me at least) news about it. We've been waiting on the renewal for this year for the past couple weeks and had already heard from our insurance guy that a G coupe would be ~$50 a month more than my Sentra renewal would be, of course with that in mind he somehow couldn't then tell us what the renewal price was. This week I found out that the renewal would be $106 a month, up from $78 due to a couple accidents and a ticket over the past couple years. That leaves me looking at ~$160 a month for the G, with our insurance guy saying he's going to be able to improve the numbers from there, somehow (but hey that works for me).

This leaves me with 2 questions, one about insurance that is fairly general (I hope), and two in relation to buying the car. First off, I'll be 25 at the end of February, and we're looking at buying the car then. Can anybody tell me what sort of difference, if any, that will make? I know it generally is the time when prices drop, but is it typically significant or no?

Second, with regard to actually buying the car, upon inspection what generally would be the case should something need replacing/fixing? I'm planning on going through our dealer friends to buy one at a wholesale auction, and they're a Nissan dealer and they say they can get good off-lease vehicles/manager-driven vehicles - possibly just a line but who knows.

My question is this: when they get the car, say I get it checked out both for TSB-type issues like the '05 OC issue, or oil in the spark plug area, or a worn-out clutch - are these things that I should then request that they fix or they should just fix prior to my committing to a purchase? I mean obviously I don't want to buy a car with a dying clutch, etc, but do people generally agree to buy under the conditions of things being rectified ahead of time or should the dealer generally be able to avoid cars with such problems in the first place? I would think it might be somewhat difficult to find these things out at auction, but it still isn't my responsibility and I'm certainly not interested in a broken vehicle either. I apologize if these questions are stupid in any way, but I haven't actually bought a car before so it's all new to me.

Thanks in advance

 

Hey,

Hope you're doing well. I'm in the same boat as you since I'm currently looking for a G35 coupe. I don't know much about your first question regarding insurance so I can't really help you there much but I'd advise you to shop around for insurance before renewing your contract and using that to bargain for a better deal with your current insurance company. Nothing works better than the threat of switching to their competitors

But I do know a little bit about the wholesale auctions because I know someone who buys cars through these auctions. There are two important things for you to know as a buyer:

1. Nissan/Infiniti performs a pretty thorough inspection on the cars they get back from a lease and issues a "Condition Report" on each car they sell at their auctions. Every dealer who goes to these auctions has access to these reports a few days before the auction. So tell your friend that you're looking for a g35 with whatever specs you want and ask them to send you the condition report if they find one at the next auction(s). These reports are pretty reliable cuz Nissan/Infiniti isn't trying to screw their dealers. It'll tell you what kind of damage the car has and how much time is needed to be spent to fix those issues. Most of the time, they won't fix the issues before selling them.

2. Which brings me to my second point, which is that if you're buying a car off an auction I'd highly recommend getting one which still has its 'bumper-bumper' warranty. Even if the car has its powertrain warranty you can end up spending hundreds, if not thousands trying to fix other issues. You'd be paying a little bit more for a car with warranty but I think its worth it.

Now if the car had some serious damage that Nissan/Infiniti didn't report prior to selling the car, you can return it through some arbitration process. But in most cases, they'll report the major issues and won't take the car back for example if the CD Player doesn't work.

Also I would say, talk regularly to your friend who goes to these auctions and ask all sorts of questions. Also, ask em what happens if they buy the car and you go to get it and don't like it for one reason or another and decide not to get it. Will that hurt your relationship with them?

Hope this helps.

 

Hey,

Thanks for the response, I really appreciate the info. Hopefully I'll be able to get it figured out pretty soon and find myself a good one that does still have some warranty left. I'm thinking either way I'll get an extended warranty as well for peace of mind at least. I would say good luck to you as well, now seems to be the right time to be buying at least, which is a plus.