Now is a good time to mention that we view car dealers as adversarial in your car-buying sojourn. We tend to say negative things about car dealers because we know that they have a profit motive behind everything they tell you, and there is no standard by which they operate that prevents them from wiggling on the truth to make extra profit.

Now having said that, we still recommend buying from dealers in many cases because in spite of the fact they are trying to make a profit from you, they are also regulated, and most of the time, can do the best job of supporting the sale in terms of vehicle maintenance and warranties.

Government Auctions or non-government auctions are also adversarial. They are there to make a profit, even if the Government puts on the auction. They want to get as much money for the vehicle as possible with the least amount of cost involved. In an effort to limit misrepresentation of items up for auction, it’s typical for almost no information to be provided on the vehicle, other than mileage, vehicle identification number VIN number and known defects. Vehicles sold at Government Auction are sold “as is where is,” so you get no post-sale support. If it falls apart the minute you take it home, it is entirely your headache.

There is a mechanical risk when buying a vehicle from private party too, only with a private party it’s more likely that there be some wiggling on the truth, typically in the form of omission. If there is an intermittent rattle in the transmission that only occurs after a couple of hours of driving, do you really think the private party seller is going to tell you about it?