Whether new or used, buying a car is a process of discovery. While we can all try our best with test drives and, on used cars, pre-purchase inspections, there are always things we just don’t learn until after we sign on the dotted line. Some of those things might even surprise us, and we’d love to know about your surprises.
As enthusiasts, we typically find a way to join the hivemind after we buy a car, tapping into a community of expertise. After I bought my Boxster, I joined a Boxster-specific Facebook group with five figures worth of members but only three moderators. It turns out, that’s because the 986 Boxster community is chock-full of lovely, tactful, helpful, civilized people, and seems to largely be a self-moderating entity. I like it when car people are good people.
My most questionable surprise came from my 325i. Finding out that an airbag code was caused by a homemade smoking apparatus being jammed underneath the passenger seat, knocking a plug out of the seat harness, wasn’t quite as positive of a surprise. Negative surprises can even happen with new cars. My dad was surprised with how much he hates his Hyundai Sonata, while Matt’s big surprise is similarly short and sweet:
On the flipside, a Cadillac ATS owner who found the secret compartment in the center stack is probably stoked for that surprise. Likewise, I recently ran into someone who was delighted to learn that the ambient lighting in their Mini can cycle through colors.
So, what are the best and worst surprises you’ve encountered after buying a car? Whether an original window sticker hidden inside the handbook or weird distortion at the bottom of the windshield, voice your experiences in the comments below.
(Photo credits: Thomas Hundal)
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Best – Bought a ’75 TR6. Previous owner said the engine never got warm when he drove it. The thermostat housing was empty. $5 thermostat fixed it
Worst – Same car. Everything else was in the same condition. I learned a ton from that car!
Worst surprise:
I worked part time for a Mercedes repair & restoration shop while in college. The owner picked up a rough running but apparently straight and mostly complete Jaguar Mark 2. The paint and body looked pretty decent, but it had clearly been sitting and had bad fuel in it. I set out to drop the fuel tank and replace all the fuel lines and filters to the front. At some point I pressed against the inner rear wheel well – and my hand went through it!
Both rear wheel wells were entirely rusted out, and someone had made new ones with spray foam and wire, then painted and patinaed them to match the rest of the car.
WTF?
That’s incredible.
I picked up a new bmw 330 as a company lease back in 2015. When I rummaged around in the boot the first time I found two wrapped German breath mints lying around in there! I’d like to imagine they fell out of the breast pocket of some meticulous German quality control engineer during final inspection when they went in there to remove some specks of factory dust. I put them in the glovebox and they were still there when I gave up the lease 3 years later. I hope they’re still there.
The corporate gas card that slid out from under the 4WD shifter cover in my used truck was pretty unexpected!
Best and worst were in the same vehicle.
Good: Free 1962 GMC Carryall.
Bad: Favorite aunt left it to me when she passed
Good: Has every god damned trick thing you could want. Air lockers, GM Crate motor, 3/4 ton running gear, 4L80E trans, AC, etc etc etc
Bad: Hasn’t run in probably a decade
Bad: Someone has been in there trying to get it to run.
Bad: Rodents
Bad: Severe rust
Good: https://youtu.be/yDPvSJPtN-g
Whatever the brown sticky substance was in the passenger footwell that I had to freeze and scoop out with a spoon after buying our Cavalier many years ago.
My van gave me many bad surprises, but for better or worse, I can’t really include any here since they weren’t immediate problems. (I feel like the spirit of the question is quick discoveries.)
My Prius’s little cardholder slot by the driver was a pleasant little doodad, especially when I was commuting with a card swipe to get into the employee garage. Other than that, it’s just been surprising in how unsurprising it’s been. Reliable, durable, etc.
I was unpleasantly surprised reading about potential future mechanical concerns it might have, but knock on wood, none have happened yet.
Other than that, I wish every ICE car had this planetary gear CVT. So nice to not be gear-hunting like the van’s 4-speed automatic.
Best: a nice pair of Bluepoint wire strippers in my first MR2 Roadster.
Worst- the least competent HID conversion on my XJ. Mind you that car was full of bad surprises.
I’d also say the rust, but that’s not a surprise with anything I buy.
Best the free Lada I had only needed a fuse to fix the charging, worst MGB had rocker panels made out of newspaper shelf uprights and egg cartons among the more identifiable bits-
Former girlfriend buys a used Smart electric, comes with just one clicker key. No Smart dealers left, so have to go to the Mercedes dealer for a duplicate. The $380 key quote was the first surprise. The second was learning that if she lost the remaining key, MB would need to order a new ECU, plus towing, programming, labor, and keys from scratch.
In other words, the car was one lost key away from being totaled.
I bought a 17 year old NA Miata from the original owner in Seattle. Being from the US East Coast, I had some experience with what that many winters do to Japanese iron. But this was the salt-free and temperate PNW, so I was delighted to find the original paper factory QA decals still adhered to the pristine underside of the car.
We bought a 2-3 year old Mazda5, and we were told it only had 1 key. It was one of those switchblade keys, so getting another was more trouble than it was worth right away.
Fast forward a year or so, and my wife calls me from a gas station where she has a flat tire that won’t reinflate. I drove over and gave her my car to take the kids home while i put the spare on.
I pulled out the spare from the well, and under it was a white plastic pouch. I picked it up and squeezed it to get an idea what was in it, and the doors unlocked.
I ripped it open – lo and behold! – the second factory key!
A former colleague bought a used BMW, negotiated 900€ off the price because a key (or rather keyless entry fob) was missing and those are apparently quite expensive to replace.
Fast forward half a year or so, his dash starts showing a warning light. He drives to the dealer, dealer says “oh it’s just the battery in your key fob running low, let me change those real quick”. Batteries get changed, light goes away. For a week. Then it comes on again.
Colleague drives back to the dealer, dealer says “well that can’t be right”, goes diving between the seats and pulls out the other key fob.
My colleague told me that story the next day with a big grin on his face until I reminded him that he had been driving and parking an unlocked car for half a year where everybody could have just opened the doors and driven away because there was a bloody proximity fob IN THE DAMN CAR the whole time. Wiped the smile right off his face.
That kind of BS never happened with good old keys.
I thought for sure when you said white plastic pouch it would be cocaine
I was a bit concerned that it might have been!
it wasn’t a Delorean
$20 bill tucked away in the owner’s manual of an ’89 Coupe DeVille was a nice surprise. Bought it from the original owner, had probably been in there since the car was new.
My Grandparents on both sides did that trick. Having lived thru a couple of world wars, and the depression, they tried to be prepared for the unexpected. Of course every time the grandkids would come to visit the money would disappear.
Eventually the cash was stashed in the Grandma Kleenex box.
Hmmm… not bad, $20 in 1989 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $49.48 today
Not sure if this counts, but approximately 18 years after buying my car new I discovered that the big knob on the side of the seat cushion raises and lowers the seat.
Roughly similar, but after decades of rentals where we pulled over on the way to return to see where the gas cap was, some poster on a blog mentioned there’s an arrow at the gas gauge that indicates the side.
This was nothing short of revelatory, and my partner and I were in our forties when we learned it. I still marvel at it at almost 70.
I only learned about the little arrow thing in the past few years. What an amazing find.
After obtaining older cars that don’t have the little arrow, I’m thinking the feature may be no older than about 35 years old.
Related: one of my cars has a manually operated fuel flap. I could not open it for the life of me. Then I learned it locks when the doors lock. Clever German engineering.
I bought a used LX470 last summer that had extensive dealer service records that were viewable on line. Several months later, I was going through the records to make my own maintenance schedule and discovered that the dealer added a service visit by the prior owner where the dealer told them they needed new catalytic converters, which apparently led them to trade it in. That was bad. I fixed it with a $10 oxygen sensor gasket. That was good.
Wife and I bought a new Hyundai Tucson two years ago. We did a test drive in the mid-trim model, and it had wireless Apple Carplay/Android Auto… Which was a feature that was pretty important to my wife.
We ended up buying the highest trim model, which oddly did not come with wireless Apple Carplay. We assumed that if the mid tier model had wireless, surely the higher trim would too.
Lesson: test drive the spec you want and don’t assume anything (and if you’re wondering why a higher trim has wired Apple Carplay while the cheaper mid-trim gets wireless… Apparently it’s because the higher trim has a bigger screen and GPS navigation; and the GPS wifi module takes up the slot where the Apple Carplay wireless Wi-Fi module would go. At least that’s what the car forums concluded).
Best surprise? In my ’91 Thunderbird SC, after I bought it I popped open the center console and there were two cassettes – Mr. Mister and Mike & The Mechanics – to use in the previously restored tape deck. Close second? I the ’93 Miata I replaced the Thunderbird with after the wreck (cries), I looked in the trunk and found the very rare original plastic faceplate cover for the MSSS1 stereo.
Worst surprise? Bought a 1963 Corvair Monza 900 Convertible. I set to work stripping off paint to do some restoration and found that it was a patchwork of poor metal patches, bondo, fiberglass and rust everywhere. There was barely any car. Was not restorable, sadly.
> Mr. Mister and Mike & The Mechanics
If it were me that would just total the car
I found that the sloppy shifter in my New Edge Mustang GT, that had a reputation for not being the tightest was actually the result of an aftermarket shifter that had been installed with a bushing missing. I found it when I went to install a new shifter I bought, and was able to resell the shifter the previous owner had installed to recoup some of the costs of the one I preferred.
I’m picking up a new Wrangler tomorrow, so hopefully no negative surprises there.
One more positive surprise. I had a 92 LeBaron convertible with non working AC. All I had to do was plug a connector back in.
“Wait, this is a V8? Hot damn!”
That seems pretty wild to be something you didn’t know going into a car purchase…sort of.
Worst and Best at the same time. I bought a Dodge D50 for a light work truck (just to carry tools and personal scaffolding). I took it to the self service car wash right after I got it. While cleaning out everything from under the seat, I found a loaded 9mm.
I still have the gun, and to this day, I don’t know if it was the old tuck owner’s or what
Purchased a ’91 F350 longbed dually crewcab. Arranged for it to be driven to my work site where I was simultaneously selling my ’87 F150 to a coworker. The dually had been driven there through some twisty turny narrow roads. Made the deal, exchanged the money. I didn’t make it 20 minutes towards home before a tire blew out. I had to replace all 6 tires, and had to have it towed home. Tires looked good, but not so.
Shortly after I bought the F150, I had to have the rear end rebuilt. PO included u-joints to fix the noise that turned out to be the rear end locker. Ugh.
Best: a Bentley Repair manual and maintenance record found in my Boxster, along with the broken heated seat that turned out to just be plugged in wrong.
Worst: 2-series had a partially crushed front bumper under the new fascia, unreported and obviously hidden. What’s worse is the fascia was painted with taped-over misaligned headlights, so when I aligned them, there was a black unpainted contour underneath the lights.
My wife bought a ‘97 Ranger for me sight unseen for $350. We were told it had a massive oil leak and the PO expected it was the rear main seal. Mercifully, it was just a bad oil pan gasket, so after a few hours of fiddling with that and fixing the exhaust, the Ranger is in great mechanical shape. Heck, the AC even works. Best $350 we’ve ever spent.
Not for me, but for my father: the various visual Easter eggs on new Jeeps.
He was a Jeep man from the days of the OG Wagoneer, but had owned an Explorer for the last 10 years. He had just bought a new Grand Cherokee and I pointed out a few of the hidden images Jeep sneaks in. It made him happy, and every time I’d see him, he’d point out another he’d found on his own.
Hey automakers, little things like this really matter!
The shadiest one was the picture of the Detroit skyline under the gen. 2 Chrysler 200’s center rubber mat. It was shady because it very deliberately omitted the GM RenCen.
https://gmauthority.com/blog/2017/05/each-chrysler-200-houses-a-quiet-diss-to-general-motors/
That’s awesome and made even better by Chrysler not actually being in Detroit. And I’m glad the 200 got some love…you figure if there were a car that Chrysler would skimp on the fun, it’d be that one.
Had an ’89 Eagle Premier… under the hood was a sticker “Made for Chrysler by AMC”
I haven’t thought about those in years! Handsome design, and couldn’t they be had with the same V6 as the Delorean?
I know it was a 3.0L V6 and was used in the Dodge badged Monaco version, I don’t know about the Delorean.
I just bought a 1998 BMW e36 as a daily. The console is so weird. It has a cupholer, ashtray, and coin holder. But the cupholder was waaay at the rear, so I had to put the armrest up to use it.
I was cleaning the cupholder, and I found out the entire thing is modular! You can put the coin tray anywhere, the cupholder anywhere. So I slid it up to the front. Perfect!
It’s a small thing, but it was seriously hampering my enjoyment of the car.
E36 as a daily? Brave, but I dig it. I love mine and try to take it out any time I can.
It’s a 318i with an automatic, but it only has 109k miles. It’s slow and boring, but a good, cheap commuter car.