roger13134

I am very interested in buying a 2016 ES 350. Test drove today and it drives very nice. Car has been well maintained with service every 5,000 miles or so by dealer service team. Car was being leased, 1 owner, drove for 2 years. Is 40,000 miles considered too much mileage for being a CPO? That is my only concern with this car. Asking price is around 33,000 but I think I can get it down 1-2k.

I want this car to last 10+ years but with low mileage each year (less than 10,000)

What do you think? I know Lexus are reliable, but is 40,000 miles too high?

zes

If you plan to put 100,000 miles on it, and it already has 40,000 miles, it will have a total of 140,000 miles. That should be no problem for a well maintained Lexus engine. These are very well built cars and this is a proven engine design from Toyota.

newyerker

only relative to its year, it is sorta high, but on its own, i would not say that is high at all. and ive seen someone in this forum with a 2015 es300h with 90000+ miles LOL, original owner.

Freds430

Lexus has been #1 in reliability for six years in a row by J D Power. The ES is rated #1 by them in the compact premium car.
http://www.jdpower.com/ratings/study...emium-Car/1120
Lexus is the third least expensive to maintain behind it's cousins Toyota and Scion.
http://twocents.lifehacker.com/the-c...ver-1781639773
Now for your 40,000 miles. The fluids as you stated have been changed. In 40,000 miles, the oil should have been changed four times at 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 and 40,000 miles and the brake fluid should have changed at 30,000 miles.
Under warranty, you have six years of driving with unlimited mileage. For you it will be out of warranty with 100,000 miles. This car if you maintain it the way it has been the first 40,000, it could last 20 years.

lesz

By itself, I wouldn't be overly concerned about the car having 40,000 miles, but there are some things that I'd make sure that I checked.

At 40,000 miles, there is a good chance that the car is early into its second set of tires, but there is a chance that it is still on its first set, and, if it is, it will be needing new tires very soon. To be certified, the car only needs to have 5/32 of an inch of tread left on the tires, which is only about 1/4 of their original tread life. Make sure that you look at the CPO checklist, which should show how much tread is left on the tires, and, if they are only at 5/32 or 6/32, request either that the tires be replaced or that the need for you to replace them soon is taken into account in the selling price.

Similarly, the brake pads only need to have about 1/3 of their useful life left to meet CPO standards. The CPO checklist should also show how much of the brake pads are left.

Know that you could buy a CPO vehicle whose tires and brake pads need to be replaced within months of the purchase, and that could add $1500-2000 to the real cost of the vehicle.

Also know that dealer prices on CPO vehicles that are only 1 or 2 years old are often much higher than they should be to make sense as being considered as a "good buy". For the 2016 or 2017 model years, not that many cars have come back to dealers, at this point, in the form of trade-ins or lease returns. So, the supply of 2016 or 2017 CPO vehicles is much smaller than it will be a couple of years from now. That limited supply allows dealers to price such 2016 and 2017 CPO vehicles higher than they deserve to be priced and to hold to those prices while being confident that someone will eventually pay those inflated prices.

In order to evaluate the pricing on the 2017 CPO ES that you are considering, I'd want to know much more about the car. Besides wanting to know more about its cosmetic condition, I'd want to know more about how the car is equipped. Is it a Luxury Package ES or Ultra Luxury Package ES? Does it have a navigation system or the ML audio? What other options does it have?

If the car is a well-equipped UL ES with an original MSRP of around $50,000, the $33,000 asking price could be a great deal. On the other hand, if it is a modestly equipped base ES with an original MSRP in the low $40,000 range, the $33,000 asking price would not, to me, be very attractive.

Year-to-year auto sales have been, in general, down, and, at this point in the ES life cycle, sales for the ES have been down. Through most of the 2016 model year, discounting on the ES was quite significant. Through much of the 2016 model year, there was a factory rebate of $3000 or even $3500 available, and it was typical for many buyers to be able to buy a new ES for $6000-7500 or more off of MSRP. That means that a 2016 ES with a MSRP of, say, $42,000 might have originally sold for $35,000 or $36,000 or even less. To me, that makes spending $33,000 on a used 2016 ES with 40,000 miles on the odometer not look especially attractive.

Also note that a 2016 ES with 40,000 miles on the odometer has a value of about $3000 less than a 2016 ES with, say, 15,000 miles on the odometer.

At the time when I bought my new 2017 ES in November, 2016, I was seeing the first available 2016 ES CPO vehicles selling for prices that were actually as much as $3000 higher than the prices I was being offered to buy a similarly-equipped brand new leftover 2016 ES. It was hard to believe that the dealer was able to find buyers who were willing to pay thousands more for a used 2016 ES than what they could have paid for a brand new one, but, again, with the limited supply of 2016 CPO vehicles available and with customers who didn't realize how steep the discounting on the new cars was, they were able to sell those cars for prices that were very favorable to them.

Good luck in your purchase experience.

roger13134

Thank you everyone for your response!! Overall I'm hearing that mileage shouldn't be concern if its well maintained. I will request a copy of the service record and do some homework (perhaps request new tires and brake pads before buying). Also interesting info about the incentives on the once new 2016 ES...

BradTank

I don't think you need to worry about reliability with the mileage at all, but I do think that price is a bit on the high side.

There's plenty of people here that have bought brand new ones in the $35k-$38k range. I believe the MSRP for the ES start at $38k on the sticker.

I know for me personally, I would gladly pay $3-$5k more for a brand new one with a 4 year/50k mile warranty. 40k miles on a one year old car should have a bigger discount than what they are offering.

Wandl

Letting us know what equipment the ES you are looking at has will help better craft if the value is a good buy or potentially more wiggle room in negotiating? That said, I have reached out to a handful of dealers here in the midwest (I'm in TX) for leftover 2016's....most are low mileage loaners, demo or manager cars (miles range from 1000-7000 but never titled) and about $6k-$9k off MSRP. Lexus of Arlington in IL has a bunch of leftover 2016's you can check just as a method of comparison.

The CPO unlimited miles warranty is a great benefit to you though being the fact the ES you are looking at is 2016, you'd have "unlim miles warranty" till 2022 depending on the in-service date of the vehicle....for a luxury vehicle, that's a pretty good warranty...not that you'd need it though but nice to have!

lesz

I would also be curious about how that 2016 CPO ES is equipped. As I said in my earlier post, if it is a fully loaded UL ES with an original MSRP of around $50,000, the car would likely be an excellent buy at the $33,000 asking price. On the other hand, if that ES is a base/premium package car without desirable options and which had an original MSRP of, say, $42,000, I would not consider the car to be a good buy at anything close to the asking price.

Lexus of Arlington was one of the several dealers that I shopped when I eventually ended up buying my 2017 ES last November. What I found was that 2016 CPO ES vehicles were actually priced at a few thousand more than the prices that I was being offered for brand new (not demo) similarly equipped 2016 ESs. The prices that I was being offered for those brand new 2016s were generally in the range of 20% off of MSRP.

Previous model year CPO cars are probably the hardest CPO cars for which to get what I would consider to be a "good deal". Demand is high for those previous model year cars, and supply is low. When the dealer tacks on the (hefty) premium for CPO certification/warranty, the prices of those previous model year CPO cars can be more than the prices for leftover brand new cars of the same model year, and they can come within a couple of thousand dollars of what a brand new current model year car could be bought for.