I live in Wisconsin and this dealer is in Illinois. I saw on the Internet that he was advertising a 1999 Dodge Intreprid with only 44,000 miles for only $4200. He had many pictures posted and the car looked extremely clean and at that price, a bargain.
So, I drove hundreds of miles down into Illinois only to find out the car stunk, had electrical problems, rust in unusual places, and was probably involved in a flood. When asking the dealer about it, he said no, none of these cars have been in floods - they all have clean titles. Well, I felt my whole trip was wasted - so I looked at about 10 other cars on his lot and test drove them all. Nearly every single car on his lot had some sort of problem with it. This guy buys his cars from auctions where other dealers sell them because they have problems too expensive to fix.
#1. Do not be tempted by anything you see on the Internet from this dealer. When you arrive in person, the car is likely to have something wrong with it.
#2. Only look at his cars if you are local to the area.
#3. Pay a professional mechanic to throughly inspect the car you want to buy.
#4. Get the title when you pay for the car.
I ended up buying another car on his lot that I thought was okay. It ended up needing over $1,800 in repairs. The power locks didn't work, there was no key to open the trunk, two tie rods were broken, the car needed new tires and alignment, the hood needed new support holder-uppper thingys, the radiator was full of bad fluid, the oil needed to be change, and the gas tank was empty (he refused to fill it when I bought the car).
Anyway, he told me he'd send the title the day after I bought it using FedEx next day air service. He never did. It took him over a month to send the title (I was concerned I'd never get it). When he did send the title, he sent it to the wrong address and I ended up having to drive 190 miles just to go get the title. That a-hole.
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