I'm looking on craigslist for a '96 Honda Civic LX 4-Dr in white and I came across a listing in my price range. Problem is, I'm not sure if going with a car that has 289K miles on it would be such a good idea.. The car looks good but 289K miles is a lot of miles and I'm wondering what would have a worse resale value, a car with that many miles or one with 100K miles but salvage title.

 

the salvage title def....

 

Whats your price range? A 96 with THAT many miles cant possibly be going for that much.

 

Not necessarily... It's sometimes very hard to tell just by looking if a wrecked/fixed salvage car is going to be a nightmare later on. There are a lot of factors there that just can't be seen at a glance, mostly being alignment (and thus tire wear) and water leakage.

A friend of mine has a salvage EG with 120K on it that's a POS... it's got some kind of crazy wiring problem we haven't figured out yet whereby sometimes it just dies, and sometimes it won't start. When it's running, it runs like a champ. I'm 80% sure it's a ground, but I haven't found a bad ground yet.

So, it depends. I don't think 289K is too many miles depending on the price and condition. Mine's got 211K and I wouldn't hesitate to drive it cross country and back, but it's also been meticulously cared for all it's life, and it's swapped.

If it's had proper upkeep and new engine and transmission (as you said), I'd have little problem buying it.

 

are you related to farkiller?

 

High mileage doesn't scare me. Extremely low mileage does though, because it basically tells me the car has been sitting, which is about the worst thing you can do to a vehicle. Resale value really shouldn't concern you much, its a 13 year old car

 

I wouldnt go with the salvage titled car. Go with the one with high mileage. In this day and age you can have a chassis with 500k miles on it with decent mods and sell it for 3-4k. Plus mileage shouldnt matter if you plan on doing modifications anyway. People will be attracted to the highlighted attributes of the vehicle.

 

I think it depend on who drove that vehicle. I think it didin't matter wealther it high or low mileage. It just depend on the driver. There are some peoples abuse and don't maintenance his/her car..