How many kilometres is just too much on a used car?

By: Bruce Newton

A higher number of kilometres on an odometer is generally a red flag for used car buyers, but high kilometres isn’t always a bad thing. Here’s how to tell whether you need to walk away or not.

There’s a lot to consider when you head out to buy a used car. You’ve got a budget and you’ve a got a model - or at least a group of models - you are interested in.

But then it gets more complicated. How old is too old, how many kilometres are too many and are there some brands that are a better bet than others as their vehicles age?

There are few black and white answers, so let’s try and give you some basic guidelines to follow.

The age of the vehicle vs mileage – how should a used car buyer assess this?

If there’s one thing that unites used car experts, it’s this over-arching principle: when shopping for a used car go for the youngest vehicle with the lowest mileage you can find in your price range and chosen segment.

Age and mileage wearies vehicles. The more they drive the more parts wear and eventually wear out.

Generally speaking, a younger vehicle will have lower kilometres and therefore be that much fresher. More recent models should also be better equipped – the upgrades in safety features, for instance, have been constant over the years.

Newer vehicles may also still qualify for the manufacturer warranty, which these days often stretch to five or seven years.

There are all sorts of provisos in this of course. A vehicle that’s had a short, hard working life as an Uber ride-share may be more worn than an older vehicle that’s been pottering about the suburbs usually occupied by a driver alone.

“Every car is unique,” cautions Ross Booth, the global chief of vehicle valuation experts Red Book. “Just because a car has low kilometres doesn’t mean it’s a good car and just because a car has high kilometres doesn’t mean it’s a bad vehicle.”

“It comes down to what you’re looking for and the condition of the vehicle.”

The make/model of a vehicle and how that impacts it longevity.

Toyota, Toyota, Toyota. That’s the brand the experts consistently raise as the used car gold standard.

There are many reasons for this, including build quality, reliability, service and back-up among them. Of course, you’ll often pay more for a Toyota, but you’ll also get more back when you sell it - if you look after it.

It’s not an impervious and infallible rule, but there is no doubt your chances of a Toyota Corolla small car or RAV4 medium SUV delivering a durable, trouble-free experience are higher than for virtually any other brand.

Of course, even in the case of Toyota, the lower the kilometres and the younger the age, the better your experience will potentially be. Every vehicle wears out at some point.

If not Toyota then what? Other Japanese brands are worthy of consideration too, especially the vehicles that are actually built in Japan. The distinction is important. Currently, no other country on earth delivers mainstream new vehicle build quality like Japanese factories.

Plenty of the Japanese brands build cars in other countries and they are often pretty good too. For instance, most one-tonne utes are built in Thailand and most of them come from Japanese companies.

So Honda, Isuzu, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru and Suzuki are all brands worth considering.

Widen your search that bit further and newer Korean models from Hyundai and Kia are rising stars. That’s because those two brands have gone through the most dramatic uplift in quality, reliability and modernity of any cars on sale in Australia.

Kia’s mainstream range of models like the Sportage and Sorento SUVs are among the best in their segments and come with a transferrable seven-year/unlimited km warranty. Older Korean models? Not so much. However, the newer Korean cars are excellent.

On the subject of what to avoid, the experts we spoke to were pretty blunt in their appraisal of European and North American brands. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid. Reliability and cost of repairs are big issues. You might buy a good one or you may not, it’s just not quite as safe a bet as the Japanese and Koreans.

If a luxury car is of appeal, then Lexus is the stand-out recommendation. It’s the luxury division of Toyota.

There’s another factor to consider in all this and that’s not to get sucked in by baubles and gadgets on the equipment list ahead of the important basics.

Simple is often best. These days the vast majority of warranty claims for vehicles relate to electrical issues.

“They are expensive and difficult to fix,” says Ross Booth.

If you’re not sure about your chosen vehicle, go online. Most cars have an owners’ page where problems and positives are discussed, including maintenance and service costs that sometimes don’t become relevant until years after the initial purchase.

Is there a ballpark figure that should be a used car buyer’s cut-off point when looking at age or mileage?

Statistics compiled by automotive data analytics experts Autograb show private sales account for 60 per cent of used car transactions in Australia. Forty per cent of those sales are for cars aged 10-15 years. On dealer lots, 22 per cent of sales are 5-7 years and 21 per cent are under two years.

Booth said 100,000km was a psychological cut-off point for buyers where the value started dipping. Add another 100,000km and by then the pricing is flatlining.

One used car sales executive for a national dealer chain told us that five to seven years and 160,000km was the cut-off for its yards. It becomes harder to justify offering warranty support beyond that age and mileage.

But those numbers are for an orthodox small-medium SUV or passenger car from a mainstream brand.

In 2023 according to Autograb statistics, the Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux utes were the two biggest selling vehicles on the market.

Then there are the big SUVs like the Toyota LandCruiser, Ford Everest and Mitsubishi Pajero that are very popular as tow vehicles.

The vast majority of those vehicles are turbo-diesels, which is an engine type that has a reputation for being more durable than petrol units. So 200,000 or 300,000km engines are not unusual.

That doesn’t mean all diesels necessarily have sound long-term (or even short-term) reliability, but the good ones generally do. Toyota has a good reputation in this area of the market, even if its current 2.8-litre 1GD-FTV diesel engine has had its troubles in recent years.

But it’s also worth remembering that even the good turbo-diesel engines do require significant maintenance and therefore can be expensive.

If a car has been well looked after, with regular servicing, does this extend its longevity?

Not only does regular servicing extend a vehicle’s longevity, it boosts its value and makes it easier to sell.

Just make sure it’s done on time and in full and is noted down in the car’s logbook as evidence.

Even the simplest car is a complex beast with an agglomeration of metals, plastics and rubber underpinned by an engine that heats and cools and vibrates, and an electronic architecture that manages the whole show and provides your infotainment.

Really, it’s a miracle most drive as well as they do and they don’t break down more often.

What regular servicing does is provide both preventative and safety maintenance. The engine oil has to be changed at certain intervals otherwise it turns to gunk and clogs and eventually damages the engine.

Brake pads have to be renewed at a certain wear point otherwise you’ll damage the brake discs and affect how quickly your car can stop. Tyre wear is equally as critical to the fundamental behaviour of your car.

Then there are the belts, hoses, batteries, filters, fluids and windscreen wipers that all are scheduled for replacement at certain kilometres or simply expire when they are worn out.

Regular servicing keeps tabs on all these items and ensures issues are dealt with before they become a problem.

By the way, along with checking the logbook, make sure the car you’re interested in has both keys. Modern digital keys are expensive to replace. Having just one is going to cost the seller some money, just like a vehicle that’s running out of registration.

Does the mileage threshold differ depending on the type of vehicle?

To some extent it does. We’ve made the point about some diesels having a longer lifespan than some petrol engines, but so much of it comes down to brand, servicing history and the life story of the specific vehicle.

What are some examples of vehicles that hold their value well even with high mileage?

Redbook’s Ross Booth came up with a list of six vehicles that do exceptionally well when it comes to holding their value beyond 10 years and beyond 100,000km.

Versatile vehicles dominate the list and that’s for a variety of reasons: buyer loyalty, reputation and in some cases diminishing supply as they age.

And given what we’ve already said about Toyota, there’s no surprise that there are three on this list.

Land Rover Defender: Tough as nails back to basics no-frills off-roader. A cult hero.

Toyota LandCruiser: It can tow, it can go off-road, it can carry up to eight people depending on the model. One of the most highly rated Toyotas of them all with a huge reputation in Australia.

Jeep Wrangler: Yep it’s American and yep it’s very focused on what it does well – traverse technical off-road sections. Like the Defender it has a cult following.

Toyota Yaris: The default choice for parents buying a first car for their kids.

Toyota Hilux: It’s a Toyota and it’s a ute. Double winner.

Nissan Patrol: The affordable alternative to LandCruiser.

Should I buy new or used?

That’s a great question to which the answer is… it depends.

During COVID with new vehicles in short supply the value of used cars shot through the roof. It was well chronicled that people were paying above the new price for used Toyota LandCruisers as laps of Australia became the holiday choice rather than trips to Italy.

As supply of new cars now returns gradually to normal, the price of used cars is settling a bit. But they have increased from pre-COVID days following the dramatic upward trend in pricing for new vehicles.

But here’s where it is about to get interesting. The Australian new vehicle sales market has been shored up in 2023 by back orders. In 2024 it is expected most of them will be filled and overall supply will start to exceed demand.

So we know what happens then. Discounting of new models. It’s already happening, actually. That may well mean it makes more sense to buy a new car than a used example of that model.

Over time, theoretically anyway, the discounting of new cars will also bring down the price of used cars.

So which way you go with your purchase is going to depend on what car you want and what supply of new and used is like. Of course, if your budget is $20,000 or less then it’s definitely going to be used.

What about buying a used electric car?

The problem with buying used electric vehicles at the moment is there is only a small carpark to choose from and most of them are Tesla Model 3s and Model Ys.

Beyond that there are only a smattering of models from a variety of manufacturers, many of which have only poor range performance. The good news, Autograb says, is their value is falling quickly because of that and other factors including new EVs now being available for under $40,000.

Give it a couple of years and there will be more examples of more impressive affordable EVs like the BYD Atto 3 flowing into the market.