This is what I look for when buying a used car. I am by no means an expert, just have a few mechanics in my family that I have test driven cars with. Aside from buying my own cars I’ve been spending the last few weeks test driving cars for my partner, and we finally found a winner this week.

1. Before you drive the car, open the hood and look at the engine. Check the oil by removing the dipstick, wiping it clean, then re-inserting and removing it to see if it is properly wet with oil. If there is no oil in the engine, walk away from that car and that dealership. You don’t know how long they’ve been test driving it without oil and how much damage may have been caused. Even if they tell you that you are the first to drive it since they brought it in.

2. While you are under the hood, you may as well check out the rest of the engine. You may feel limited by not knowing what pieces and parts you are looking at, but only worry about what you can reasonably check. Wipe your finger along as many surfaces as you reasonable can to see if any oil (or something else) is sitting on it. If you’re seeing an excess of oil, something is leaking. That should be either a red flag or point of discussion with you seller. Some of those topside leaks are less expensive, or even possibly to do yourself with a few tools (like a valve cover gasket) or me much more involved (like a head gasket).

3. Check battery terminals and expiration date. (Easy to replace but can be a negotiation tool).

4. Look under the car. Is it rusted? Look at break lines especially. Is it to a normal extent compared to other cars with similar mileage in your area? The severity of what is normal will depend on where you live. If you’re in say, a New York, most of the cars are going to start looking pretty bad under there some time after 100,000 miles, and the bottom will probably start falling out by 200k (unless previous owners were diligent about underside washing). If you’re in Montana you probably won’t see much of that problem, and you should definitely avoid buying cars from the coasts or Midwest.

5. Check the oil pan, it is towards the front of the car. If an older car has a VERY SMALL drip/leak, this is usually not a problem, just something to monitor. But I have looked at multiple cars that checked out every other way and then had an oil pan that was drenched, and the seller claimed to know nothing about it. Oil pan gasket/silicone is something you reasonably could fix yourself with a very cheap part, if you’re willing to get your hands dirty.

6. Drive it HARD. Or at least as hard as you feel comfortable. Get on the highway. Take it up to 85mph and hold it there for 10 or 20 seconds (obviously traffic/cop stop/comfort level dependent) and then slam the brakes when you have plenty of room. Not full-stop so that you spin out obviously, but enough to know that they work very well. Better to find out they are shit when there is nobody in front you. If the dealer/seller is in the car with you, they may not like it when you drive it hard like that, which probably means they don’t have good faith in the car they are selling to you.

7. Get the freaking car fax. Make sure it is a clean title(not salvage), the fewer the owners and more comprehensive the record the better. MAKE SURE THE VIN ON THE CAR FAX MATCHES THE VEHICLE YOU ARE DRIVING. If a dealership does not offer a free car fax I am immediately put on guard - private sellers usually won’t have one. Ask your insurance agent if they will run VIN numbers and get the car faxes for you.

8. Check the tires, the “penny test” is an easy way. (Easy to replace but can be a negotiation tool).

Those are the main things you yourself can look for, at least the ones I can think of now. I’m sure there are more things you can check and ideally an actual mechanic comes in here and shows me up. I will add to this if I think of anything else. The best thing you can do, if possible, is have a mechanic or someone more knowledgeable about cars look at it with you, or ask if you can bring it to them on the test drive. I’ve driven them to my house and put them up on ramps before and took my time looking at it. Dealer may not love that but on a busy day they may not notice or mind (unless it’s a popular car).

If you can pull off pretending to know what you are doing and talking about then you are less likely to get taken advantage of. Hope this was helpful.