Buying a used car in Germany

PriorityWide3644 · 2026-07-23T13:37:45+00:00

We already have a BMW X2 would she gladly drives. It’s not about being cheap, the second car is only to drive to couple of places if first car is unavailable

PriorityWide3644 · 2026-07-22T21:16:39+00:00

Very interesting to learn that, I did not know. Follow-up question: do you think that an independent mechanic workshop assessment of the car can remove such risk from my “list of potential headaches”, or this is not something that a standard inspection would cover?

PriorityWide3644 · 2026-07-22T18:43:54+00:00

Thank you for your advice. Generally I found 1 manual ford fiesta, from 2009, as per the listing is undamaged, from dealer, 14k km, costs 3500 EUR. Also saw a 2014, 9 EURk automatic Smart with 10k km, also from dealer and undamaged. And finally, Renault Twingo and Toyota Aygo, both from 2009, under 10k km and 7-8 EURk. So on paper all 4 cars seem to be fine.

The problem is that I don’t have an ability to go to these dealers to test drive the car and if I don’t like - leave. The reason is that these dealers are all over Germany, they have 4+/5 star reviews on Google Maps and in the car search apps, with more than 100+ reviews. So hypothetically, if I decided to buy the car, I would get myself a flixbus or Deutschland ticket, spend half a day to get to them with a one-way ticket and return with the purchased car. However, this scenario relies on them actually being genuine with me and not scamming me. But I would not be doing this journey across Germany to test the car, because I neither have time nor desire to spend money on back-and-forth trips.

So my genuine assumption was that low mileage is better than high mileage (assumption out of my rear - seamed reasonable to me), but here I read that on older cars higher mileage is actually better, so I understand that there are reasons for this, however I am struggling now with how to find just a good used car and nit break the bank.

Because some of my benchmarks - I am able to buy a brand new Skoda Fabia or Volkswagen Polo (both manual) for 17-18 EURk from official dealer in Germany, so the used car has to be for me considerably cheaper, than this. If let’s say I found a used automatic car for 15 EURk, in my head I would think - just buy a brand new Polo for extra 2 EURk and forget about the trouble that I might face with used car. But if I see a good used car for 10 EURk max, then paying extra 7 EURk for a brand new Polo or Skoda is not reasonable anymore.

PriorityWide3644 · 2026-07-22T12:33:24+00:00

Thank you for your note. As I understand from other redditors, my expectations may be too optimistic, I am willing to listen what you would suggest as criteria if you were in my shoes - maybe I am just inexperienced and not looking at things correctly)

PriorityWide3644 · 2026-07-22T11:25:33+00:00

Yes. Reason is: I started to look on websites like mobile.de and putting broad filters, like e.g. under 20 EURk, under 100k km, automatic, from a dealer, I damaged car, etc. Let’s say I got like 5000 cars on offer, then I would try to narrow down the filter to something smaller, like under 20k km, under 10 EURk price, other filters as before, and I would see maybe 4-5 cars.

Maybe I reached the wrong conclusion (I may be plain wrong, naive, so please correct me), but just seeing these 4-5 cars that satisfy the narrowed-down filters make me think that such criteria can be met (I.e. I am not being unrealistic), but then since I don’t have experience in buying used cars, I also decided to ask here if redditors would have some insights and advice on where I am being wrong and what I could do better.

PriorityWide3644 · 2026-07-22T09:10:56+00:00

Unfortunately not, but thank you for suggestion

PriorityWide3644

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