Have You Ever Bought A Car Sight-Unseen?

Autopian Asks Sight Unseen
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When you order a new car, it’s expected that you’re essentially buying it sight unseen. After all, what you wanted wasn’t on the lot, and while you may have been able to test-drive a similar model, it’s not your actual car. However, on the second-hand market, buying sight unseen is a different ballgame. It can come with a whole lot of risks, and yet, a whole lot of reward. Today, we want to know if you’ve ever bought a car sight unseen, and if you have, how did it go?

Admittedly, I’ve never actually signed on the dotted line before seeing a car. The closest I’ve come is committing to my Boxster sight unseen, although it wasn’t a case of wiring the funds and asking questions later. I had gracefully been granted a late opportunity to back out, but since the car was nice, I didn’t take it. After all, how often do yellow over blue examples come up for sale?

However, I do know people who have bought cars sight unseen, and the prevailing trend suggests most of them have been fine. So long as expectations are somewhat tempered as used cars are rarely perfect, deals can be had and rare cars found by searching far and wide. A good friend of mine found his Volvo XC90 halfway across the continent and it’s been an exceptionally lovely family car.

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So, let’s talk about buying sight unseen. Would you do it? Have you done it? How did it go? Regardless of whether you embrace the process or have trepidations, we’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

(Photo credits: Bring A Trailer, Thomas Hundal)

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71 thoughts on “Have You Ever Bought A Car Sight-Unseen?

  1. I bought a 1974 F-250 highboy off of eBay while I was deployed to Iraq. My dad had a 77, so that generation of truck had a strong nostalgia factor. I found one with a straight body and decent paint, that ran. The previous owner said it ran great, which it did if you only needed 7 cylinders, but I didn’t expect mechanical perfection and I got it at a pretty decent price. I wouldn’t buy sight unseen for something I needed to rely on as a daily.

  2. I definitely have made a purchase sight unseen as long as you mean, “live and in-person.” I saw a lot of images of my car.

    Also, I had already owned one. Here’s my short story:

    I had a 2013 Porsche Boxster. Black on black and loved it but it wasn’t optioned really how I’d wanted. Bought it CPO with about 5500 miles on it. It was wrecked, rear-ended in a hit and run on the expressway in 2019. Got it fixed but it just seemed off. Drove different. Probably my imagination really but I took it to Carmax and was surprised at the offer. They had another Boxster I wanted to look at and I thought I’d let them look at mine while I was there. The one they were selling was ragged out and crapped out but they gave me a really good offer.

    I had seven days for the offer to be good so really started searching for another. I knew I wanted the 981 Boxster (2013-2016). I had my heart set on the dark blue metallic with tan leather interior but every single one I could find was PDK, no manuals.

    I ended up finding one that was CPO at a NC dealer. Having the CPO warranty and a history with the model certainly makes buying sight-unseen easier to stomach, especially at the higher price point. But there is another way this turned out really well for me.

    I spoke with a salesman at the dealer over the phone and through emails. He was really great. I asked his opinion of the condition of the car and he told me honestly about some minor damage it had, took pictures of some small rock chips and sent them to me so I had a really good idea of what I was getting into. It had the front fascia damage so many low sports cars have when the driver rolls over the concrete parking berm barrier. Nothing horrible but I do still want to get it properly fixed and repainted. Anyway I made an offer that left me some room for the damage and accepted their counter offer.
    Having a good dealer and salesman really made it a positive experience. I know we shit on dealers a lot (deservedly) but when they’re good, it can make a great experience. This was Porsche Greensboro and I’d call out the sales guy if I could remember his name. He was awesome.

    They shipped me the car to my house north of Atlanta from NC for $450. It was packed in a trailer with a Ferrari when it got there and very well detailed.

    I still love the car and pray it never gets wrecked. At my age it’s possible I could keep it as my last ICE vehicle while updating our second car to some form of electrified car in another five or so years.

    If I ever do buy an electric I’d probably try and find someone who has what I’m interested in or rent on Turo or something and buy sight-unseen again. Those will be more of an appliance anyway so hopefully buying online with a better experience will be easier by then.

  3. I bought a 1960’s Series Land Rover 109 camper from England, had it shipped to Montreal, drove it to Vermont, swapped out the fuel tank and leaf springs and then drove it home to New York Everything went perfectly. I later bought a 1990 SWB Range Rover from someone in MA and it had all sorts of undisclosed problems and the seller was a real jerk about it.

  4. Standing in an old wrenching buddy’s driveway bitching about how I couldn’t find a manual car for $3k on CL worth buying, he casually hooked a thumb at the 02 wrx behind him, saying, “I’ll sell you that for 3: bought it a week ago—and caught myself doing over 80 three times on my way to work. My CDL feeds the kiddos: it’s gotta go!” Didn’t lift the hood or even walk all the way around it.

    I shook his hand saying I’d bring the money Monday, and went back to working on his furnace while he went to take it off fbMarketplace. 11k miles, a clutch, a fancy radiator, many happy chortles&chuckles—and not a few high-pitched nervous squeaks later—I haven’t a single regret 🙂

  5. This probably doesn’t count, but I bought my ’76 Beetle from a consignment dealer without seeing it in person or having it inspected. However, I did have the dealer send me very detailed photos of the car (around 100), videos of the engine running from multiple angles, and multiple videos of the car driving (from inside the car as well as outside). So while I didn’t physically see it or drive it, I almost certainly had a better idea of what I was buying than had I viewed the car in person or drove it myself. Unsurprisingly, the car is exactly what I thought it would be.

  6. I bought a ’62 VW bus out of Sacramento when I lived in Dallas. Flew out with my fiancée and two siblings, and drove it partway home. It broke down hard (complete loss of compression in 2 cylinders) and was not field repairable. Lots happened in the interim. Many emotions, most of them revolving around buyers’ remorse, but also a general sense of adventure. Definitely one of the best trips of my life. Whole big long story, documentation, lots of photos, etc.

    I later bought an ’84 M1009 CUCV (military K5 Blazer) out of Idaho when I lived in Denver-ish. Flew out, drove it home. Helped someone else who had broken down rather than breaking down myself that time. Similar documentation, slightly less story, photos, etc.

    My dad bought a ’57 Karmann Ghia out of Hawaii, had it shipped to LA, where we picked it up at the port and drove it back to his house east of Dallas. Oil sender turned into a water pistol, small electrical engine fire fixed on the side of the road with wire from a trailer harness, hitch hiked in the back of a cop car (prison nearby), and more. Plenty of story, documentation, and photos.

    Finally, I bought an RX-8 from Washington while living in the mountains above Denver. I had that one shipped. Pandemic was pandemicking, and I had a toddler with health issues, so driving it home all that way seemed like a bad idea.

  7. I helped family buy a Sienna AWD sight unseen. I saw it, the dealer didn’t play games and the third party inspection came back clean. They didn’t see it until about a month after they bought it. They still have it and love it.

  8. Yes. Bought an F150 FX4 on eBay
    that only had a few pics in the listing. Flew to MO and drove it back to CO. Was a cool truck. The seller picked me up at the airport in a bright yellow Prowler. Man that thing felt like a tiny interior. Seller did say before my flight, that he wouldn’t hold me to the deal when I got there, if I didn’t like it, so that was nice. I’ve also ordered 3 different Jeeps sight unseen but I pretty much knew what I was getting. However when I ordered my gladiator, no one could show me an example of what the Gobi tan looked like and there weren’t any on surrounding lots to go look at. But it’s rad and better in person than online and my second favorite truck of all-time. The first? A sweet little ’86 Mazda B2000 longbed but I think the ranking is tied to my college gf and just the late 80s in general. What a time to be alive!

  9. I’ve bought 3 cars sight unseen (all on eBay). 1985 Supra, 1998 Oldsmobile Aurora and 1994 Taurus Station Wagon. All 3 were some of the best deals I’ve ever made on cars. Note that this was some years back when it was still easy to find cheap cars on eBay (at least in Canada).

  10. I bought a car from Carvana if that counts. But they provide so much information and pictures that it wasn’t a big deal to me, and I could always reject the car after my test drive.

  11. Bought a Mini Clubman Estate off a post on the net, looked at tthe 10 or so pics, called the owner, flew all the way across the country with the large wad of cash in my pocket. When I got there the car looked good but did not run as well as I thought it should, but I bought it anyway and drove it home, 1100 miles in two days at about 60-65 mph. Kept it for several years, sold it to a guy who promptly drive it for another 20K over the next few years or so then I lost track of it. I would buy it back if I could find it……

  12. Not me, but my wife as a gift for me, bought a ‘97 Ford Ranger off Marketplace without having seen it in person. After some initial repair which were much less serious than the seller expected, it’s been a terrific little chore truck for $350.

  13. I bought my MR2 off of Marketplace photos, but it was a $700 rolling shell, so that wasn’t a big risk. I’m buying a car this fall off a friend on the other side of the Atlantic, but he has a spotless reputation and I know the car is incredibly well cared for

  14. When I bought my 22 Civic Si, they were in such high demand and low supply, I had to commit to it without ever seeing one, much less taking a test drive. I bought it from a big dealership, about 7 or 8 months after the car had been released, and they told my mine was the third that had been sent to them, and at that point, none of them had made it to the lot before being purchased.

  15. We bought a Lexus RX350 for my wife unseen from Carmax. We had test-driven a bunch of them, and my wife found an exceptional low-mileage example at a Carmax in Southern California and we paid to have them ship it up to Sacramento. At this point we felt pretty comfortable with Carmax and how they do business, so we went ahead and signed all the paperwork before we even picked up the car. I don’t think we would have done this if we hadn’t already been dealing with Carmax for several months. We felt confident they would stand behind the product they were selling us. Oh, and I should mention they did! We had a post-purchase inspection done, and Carmax agreed to put all new tires on the car, and changed the cabin air filter. Other than that, the car was in great shape.

  16. In 2011, I was shopping for an E61 535 6 speed (ie BMW 5er touring). There were…not many of those made, and the ones that were tended to have really odd option combos.

    I found one for sale in Michigan, CPO at a dealer. A friend checked it over and I made the deal; flew in and drove it home to VA.

    It was the nicest, worst car I’ve ever owned.

  17. Back in 2005, I really wanted a Subaru WRX wagon. But used ones were expensive in California, so I mostly just looked at Ebay auctions and occasionally threw in a lowball bid if I was feeling bored.

    So one day, I got an unexpected call from a Nissan dealer in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They had a low-mileage used 2003 WRX, in the signature World Rally blue, that was on Ebay but didn’t meet the reserve. Since I was a bidder, they called me to see if I would be interested in the car at $17,500, which was at least $3,000 less than what a similar one would go for locally. Yes, I was interested.

    So…I got on a plane. Hours later, I was driving 1,000 miles home in a new car wondering if I was making a huge mistake. I wound up keeping that car as my daily driver for the next 15 years, and I still miss it to this day.

  18. It wasn’t exactly sight unseen, but I don’t remember really looking at the Escort I bought from a friend for $100. I had seen it sitting in the back of his yard, he told me it ran, it was cheap, that was enough.

    And although I think we’re moreso talking used cars, I just bought a car I didn’t test drive and hadn’t seen until the day I picked it up. I had a CX-5 for a couple days pre-pandemic, so I knew well enough that it was pretty much the only new car I both liked well enough for it to be the one family car for at least a decade, and wouldn’t have to justify in any way, and I just had to wait for the next one to land that the dealer hadn’t put a bunch of add-ons on.

  19. Literally the first thing I ever bought on eBay was an 88-1/2 Suzuki Samurai. This was in… 2001 maybe?
    I was living in Baltimore at the time, the car was outside DC, and the owner said he left in a garage when he moved to Philly a few months prior. My winning bid was just north of a grand. When I went to pick it up, it turned out the garage was an underground parking garage. Know what happens to a rust-prone car that sits motionless in a cave? Yeah. David Tracy would have been proud.
    I turned the key and the screeching noise it made would curl your hair. But it ran. For a minute. A jump start got it going again with no screech this time. For another minute. It was dark down there, so we just kept restarting it until we got it out and to the gas station next door. There we found the serpentine belt in many pieces at the bottom of the engine bay. The alternator had seized from rust. The screeching we heard was the wail of that belt as the friction led to its untimely demise. At least now we knew what was up. We limped it back to the garage and headed home for the time being.
    That evening I contacted the seller by phone (imaging that happening today), told.him what happened, he apologized and sent me half my money back (imagine THAT happening today!!!). The next day my friend and I bought a new alternator and belt and spent a few hours in that “garage” replacing those parts.
    After that the good ol Sammy served me well for about two years as a daily commuter until the transmission started having issues. I sold it to a couple guys from Virginia who turned it into a rock crawler.

    Honestly… I kind of miss that thing.

  20. My current Tesla was purchased sight unseen through a Tesla forum, from somebody leaving the country, months before I could travel to pick it up. 

    Luckily, the whole thing turned out okay. But the transaction was so insane that the previous owner had to call my bank to convince them to give me the loan. 

    I had been leasing a car and started looking for a replacement a few months before the lease was set to expire. This was a big mistake because, of course, I found the perfect car at the wrong time. The owner had just bought it as a CPO but suddenly had to leave the country, so he was trying to sell it as quickly as possible. I spoke to him and did some sleuthing online. His story seemed to check out. We did a FaceTime, so I could see that there was a car, and we shook virtual hands. I transferred him the money, and he promised to store the car for THREE MONTHS at his girlfriend’s mother’s garage until I could fly to pick it up. 

    I am still surprised that there was indeed a car when I arrived. But everything turned out great. The girlfriend’s mom gave us snacks, and away we went on a car that I have been driving with no issues for the past six years. Still, I doubt I would tempt my luck again…

  21. I’ve bought my last 4 sight unseen. Lotus Elise went fine, it was a bit rougher than expected but not a big deal. Next was a Toyota Celica GT-Four ST205. That was a shitshow. Rust everywhere and it was just awful. Constantly broken and I spent several thousand over the course of the 10 months I had it. Next one was a JDM Toyota crown majesta that I didn’t actually sign or pay for until seeing it, but I found it at the auction in Japan, sent it to the dealership I was working with and he bought it. I immediately put a deposit but bought it in person. Lastly was the Peugeot 306 I imported from England. Huge mistake there. So 50/50 in my experience. I shouldn’t do it again as it’s been 2 very expensive lessons, but I probably will…

  22. I got a Nissan Cefiro from Japan via the auctions bank in 2003 I think it was. I’d seen pictures, but Google translate wasn’t great then, and 15 year rule made compliance fairly easy, so a heap of people were agents at the time.

    Even those the Wharfies nicked some stuff out of the car, I got away with something pretty decent. Good car, stock rb20et which had enough grunt to be quick, bit not enough to easily kill me.

    Good times with that car. I wouldn’t recommend buying your first car via a Japanese auction, that has a heap of mods on it though…

  23. Yes, and it was a total shitbox. It was one of the best automotive purchases I ever made. Several years ago on what would become Opposite-lock.com a fellow user was lamenting that his longtime daily driver ’98 Chevy (Geo) Metro would no longer pass Missouri inspection, and scrap metal prices were in the toilet, so the junkyard wanted to charge him $5 to take the car. I half-jokingly offered him $20 and said I’d rallycross it to death.

    Long story short, he loaded the car with a spare junkyard transmission, and multiple wheels/tires, drove it from his place in St. Louis to mine outside of Chicago (neither of us having ever met in person before!), crashed at my place. Then the next day we swapped the transmission hoping the “new” junkyard one had better syncros (it did!). When I say “we” I mean he did most of the work and I handed him tools and kept him fed and “lubricated”. Then he flew home that evening. He did all that in exchange for enough money to pay for the flight home, $140.

    It had 266k miles, the interior was mostly gutted, it had smashes, it had rust, it was a total pile … but it ran and drove and the AC even worked! I had so much fun in that stupid little thing. That car was way more fun to drive than anything with 58hp had any right to be.

    I rallycrossed that car for two seasons, and ran a Gambler 500-Illinois in it as well, before it was finally time to junk it. The car still ran, but the engine was knocking something fierce and pushing oil back out through the filler cap. The bodyshell was too rusty to justify an engine swap, unfortunately. For all that fun I had for those two years, I still didn’t have $500 into the thing. By then scrap prices had recovered, the junkyard gave me $180!

    I still want another one!

  24. Yes, I have purchased 3 cars sight unseen from out of state online sellers.( I live in Michigan and 2 of the cars were located in Texas) In 2 of those purchases, (both in Texas) I hired an independent vehicle inspector to inspect the vehicles and on one of the vehicles an issue was found ( 2 of the Power window were in-op ) and these issues were repaired by the seller at their expense and then I proceeded to purchase the car after my inspector verified the repair, the second car had zero issues found after inspection and I bought it as well. The third car, which had no independent inspection, arrived at my residence with warped, rusty brake rotors and I reached out to the selling dealer, a Jaguar dealer, and they agreed to pay for all of the brake parts, rotors and pads, which I installed myself.

    So, the moral of the story is, if you cannot inspect the vehicle in person, pay for an independent third party inspection.

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