Hi everyone, I am thinking about buying a 2007 Vantage with < 20K miles. It shows 4 owners on Carfax, but the car has been shown on sale since 2017. I asked the owner, and it turns out the owner has his own dealership business, and the car has always been under the dealership's name. I checked out the car through video call and it seems to be fine from exterior and interior. I then pulled its history through EpicVIN and found out that the car has gone through quite some dealer sales (classified) and auctions. I even found out that under one of the auction records, there are damage records on a lot of the car's panels (see below), probably written during the auction inspection. Carfax is clean though.

In summary, the car looks fine and has very low mileage, which is attractive to me. However, its kind of complicated history makes me worried. Now my question is:
1. Should I worry about the multiple auction records? I heard that sometimes if a dealer won a car and found there are too many repairs needed, the dealer will put it back to another auction. Does this mean the car had some bad damages before?
2. How much should I trust the damage summary? For all the past sales and auction photos of the car I could find, the paint and body looked good and don't seem to have bad damage. Is it still worth doing an inspection on this car?

 

My personal experience is that the dealers who “inspect” these things are often untrained and unqualified so who really knows what you should believe. They sometimes see “repairs” that were never there or miss things entirely. Same for insurance adjustors. All the reports depend on voluntary information, so if someone decides not to report a collision then it will never show up.

Nothing beats looking a car over yourself in person and having a quality independent PPI done. Those are the only things remotely dependable.

But in summary I wouldn’t necessarily be afraid of the car you are looking at based on your description. Comes down to what level of uncertainty you are comfortable with.

 

I would have the car inspected at an AM dealer or another exotic brand dealership that is near the seller. $300-500 will put you at a piece of mind. Make sure you are the one scheduling and paying for the inspection. How are the service records? Has it been serviced on an AM schedule? It can cost fair amount of money to bring the car current if the servicing has not been done. Did the seller send you pictures on a paint depth reader on the panels?

You damage report makes it look like the car has been through the ringer. Is it priced as such? Can you go see it person? How many owners doesn't concern me if the multiple owners went to the same place to get it fixed.

 

Unless it everything in an Aston you have been looking for and priced where you believe fair to you I'd pass. Especially without a reasonable amount maintenance documentation. If it is the car for you, an in person look and drive of the car is a must in my book. Of course after the PPI you order from a qualified and reputable source comes back acceptable to you. There are a number of Astons in the marketplace. Yours is out there! Good luck with your hunt.

 

Unless the price is way way below market then I'd skip it. As other said, there are way too many other cars out there for sale. If there is something unique about this one then I'd want to put eyes on it myself.

 

It is always hard to walk away... But what would worry me is the extreme # of potential owners who never owned it long enough to actually take care of it. IF every owner drove it like they stole it, then they didn't let the oil warm up and they likely didn't bother to have it changed. Pretty sure my 2006 with 25K miles had never had the wheels off or the air filter changed (based on the dates on them). It might have had the oil changed, but given it was 6 quarts low when I pulled the motor, I'm skeptical.

As always, ymmv!
Larry

 

Thanks! After posting this in the forum, I also asked the owner about this question and his answer was the same as yours - the young guy who inspected it at the auction had insufficient knowledge about these hand-made vehicles. Thus he said the prev repairs and the door dents were false, but the scratch near wheel well was true. He also encouraged me to do a PPI. I am thinking at $40K for a Sport Shift this might be a good deal?

 

Thanks! I will definitely do a PPI if I want to move forward. It was serviced at AM up until 2015 at 8500 miles. After that, no service record can be found in Carfax.

 

That doesn't mean the servicing stopped, but without any kind of other indicators it can be an unknown. Maybe they wrote the date on the oil filter or something in the owner's manual?

 

$40K for a 2007 with a questionable past is way too high. Even for $30K I would hesitate.

Take the pressure off of yourself and don’t feel this is the only Aston out there. I looked at a stunning 2016 Mariana Blue manual Vantage with only 2100 miles on it. Unfortunately the headlights and taillights had condensation and the seller was unwilling to budge on his premium asking price. Even though I had to drive six hours round trip to see the car I walked.

As mentioned above, your Aston is out there and you will know it when you see it.

 

+1 for MAUMAU.

 

My 2c fwiw.
There are a LOT of vantages.
They make DB9s look rare.
There are fewer buyers.

 

My 2007 V8V also bounced around a number of dealers and was picked up at auction by the dealer I bought it from. The car turned out to be very clean with no issues, but like you I was interested to learn more about its history. It turned out that it had failed a PPI a year or so before I bought it, due to a clutch on the verge of failure. Between that time and when I bought it all indications are that the clutch was replaced. With dealers being very sensitive about handing over service history details it's tough to get this kind of information - I had to rely on Robbie and Peninsula European to reach out to his buddies in the network.

Bottom line, a PPI is always highly recommended. There will always be another option if this one doesn't feel right.

 

Dealers and service departments are extremely good at keeping things off Carfax they don't want to be public and putting things on you do [like regular maintenance and oil changes]. Look at the Carfax on my car and you'd never tell it had been in the shop 10 times for stalling issues, finally fixed by Gayden with a software update.