Buildgol

If it's worth considering, what should I look for in a test drive / inspection if and when I check it out in person? (Besides Carfax and records.) Or are the high miles a deal breaker? I do understand that with any used car I'll be putting some money into it. So, car enthusiasts, Audi-philes, and TT owners, any opinions and info are welcome! (The dealer is asking a little under 9K, by the way.)

I wouldn't pay that much for a car that old with that many miles on it, particularly when it's a high-performance car with a complicated drive train (the AWD, in particular), imported components, and super expensive tires. It'd make a fun track car, though, if you can get it for half the price and then convert it for track use.
posted by The World Famous at 12:23 PM on September 13, 2011

Figure on replacing a bunch of transmission components, brake parts and other stuff in your purchase price. Cars like that are rarely driven gingerly and, with that many miles, I'd be pretty wary about it.
posted by fenriq at 12:29 PM on September 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

I don't have any experience with a TT but I've got a 2001 Audi A6 with 140k miles on it. Same basic idea - a couple of turbos, manual transmission, awd. It costs about $1k in maintenance every year and has for the past six years or so, aside from the timing belt which cost more like $1500. As long as all the regular maintenance has been done it should be fine.
posted by foodgeek at 12:36 PM on September 13, 2011

That's a lot of money for a car with so many years on the road that many miles on it.
One thing I've encountered with German cars is there are plastic car parts. PLASTIC! And they are expensive! Well, relatively speaking. Then you're not sure how those miles were accrued...how the previous owner or owners treated the car. Driving habits can really make a huge difference.
If you're willing to spend that much money, I'd suggest a much newer car. If they were selling that car dirt cheap, it would be worth considering just for fun. But $9k is too much money for fun.
By the way, I wouldn't trust carfax to tell you everything. It certainly doesn't tell you maintenance that was done, what issues the car had and how well maintained it was under other hands.
Good luck!
posted by Yellow at 12:58 PM on September 13, 2011

Echoing the issue with Carfax and maintenance but you mention a dealer. Is this the Audi dealer and was the previous owner a customer? They might have maintenance records that could give you a clue on how it was taken care of and you might then be able to at least get an idea of what the previous owner could have been doing with it. Still a risky bet, especially at the quoted price, though.
posted by tommasz at 1:02 PM on September 13, 2011

How much do you drive? Are you primarily looking for transportation, or a toy? I think of cars like this as being okay as toys if bought with discretionary income and not really depended on for anything. As a practical tool to get places economically, not so much.
posted by jon1270 at 1:56 PM on September 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Echoing what jon said. I had a thing for sports cars when I was younger; now I have a Toyota Echo. Not that you shouldn't get one as a toy, but here's what I learned:
Going fast is fun. Having a pretty car is fun. But there's no luxury like getting in the car and going on a long roadtrip and being 99.9% sure you're not going to break down in the middle of nowhere. That's why I'll probably stick with Toyotas forever.
posted by drjimmy11 at 2:06 PM on September 13, 2011

Do you have a full maintenance history, meticulously documented? Are you the kind of person who does obsessive maintenance and doesn't mind paying the associated costs? Then go for it. Otherwise nah.
If you decide to go for it, offer at least a couple grand less than that, and if they won't go for it, don't waste your time. Used cars are in a bubble right now, an epic one, so you're not going to get a bargain; at 7K, you're just starting to get to the car's real worth.
posted by davejay at 2:07 PM on September 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

The World Famous: 'I wouldn't pay that much for a car that old with that many miles on it, particularly when it's a high-performance car with a complicated drive train (the AWD, in particular)'
Unless the TT uses a vastly different AWD system, the Haldex Traction AWD system (ie. Quattro) used on other Audis is arguably the single most reliable component on the car. It requires little to no maintenance.
That said, Audis get rather expensive to maintain. Foodgeek's estimate of $1k/year to maintain seems about right. I've got a 1999 A4 with about 160k on it. Some years it's less than $1k to maintain, others it's more; once, it was a lot more.
However, despite the expense, I wouldn't call them chronically unreliable. I've only been stranded once, and even then, I likely could have limped along to a service station. (And, for whatever reason, AAA seems to have better response times 'in the middle of nowhere' than they do in populated areas, but I digress. You do have AAA, right?).
Some of Audi/VW's 1.8LT engines had a nasty oil sludge problem that severely limited their life, and tore through turbochargers like candy. I'm not sure if they managed to work that kink out by 2002. An updated version of the 1.8L engine is still present in their lineup, so I imagine that they did. That said, the 2.0L FSI Turbo engine they introduced that largely replaced the 1.8L across Audi's lineup is a damn impressive piece of engineering -- fast, powerful, and astonishingly efficient.
Wikipedia says that there are two class action lawsuits against Audi regarding the TT from that year, so be warned that you may have Instrument Cluster or Timing Belt (ouch!) problems. Speaking of the timing belt, be prepared to need to do certain bits of maintenance at either a dealer or Audi specialist. Your local mechanic can take care of most things, but I always go to a specialist if I need any engine problems diagnosed or fixed.
Still, they're darn nice cars. If I'm ever forced back into the realm of car ownership, I'd probably buy another used Audi. $9k for this car seems like a lot, with that kind of mileage, though.
posted by schmod at 3:01 PM on September 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

Unless the TT uses a vastly different AWD system, the Haldex Traction AWD system (ie. Quattro) used on other Audis is arguably the single most reliable component on the car. It requires little to no maintenance.
That the TT's Quattro system is more reliable than the other systems on the car is not particularly reassuring. No matter how well-built or engineered it is, an AWD system has more components and potential failure points than a two-wheel-drive system.
I wouldn't call it chronically unreliable, either. Just more costly to fix and with more possible points of failure than a two-wheel drive car.
I love a lot of things about the TT. And I wouldn't necessarily reject the idea of a 2002 TT Quattro with 140k miles on it. But for the asking price? Nah.
posted by The World Famous at 3:15 PM on September 13, 2011

Thanks for all the input everyone. The TT came onto my radar because it seems to intersect the fun / practical enough / safe / stylish / reliable points better than anything else I've seen. If this particular one had closer to 100,000 miles, I'd be less skittish, thus my AskMe.
I may check it out, but I'm also tracking down others with much lower miles, but a fair distance away.
To quickly reply, I don't have a long commute. About 5 miles, which I bike when I can. We take a few road trips a year, but don't spend hours per day in city driving or freeways. I probably put less than 4000 miles a year on my car.
Oh, and I wouldn't pay anything close to asking price. :)
posted by The Deej at 6:25 PM on September 13, 2011

I just bought a 1996 F150 pickup with 257,xxx miles on the clock, and it's the most beautiful pickup in Austin. By far. It's like a brand new truck. Previous owner -- an old guy in East Texas, on the Texas/Louisiana line, an ornithologist who drove the truck all over Texas and Louisiana looking at birds. Other than that it was in his garage.
There aren't even any chips in the paint. It's an amazing thing, the cleanest truck I've ever bought, and I've had some sweet pickups.
It needed a windshield, it's going to need shocks, the brakes aren't as tight as the brakes on my old pickup, but that's just because I didn't install them; I'll put on the next set. The oil pressure gauge doesn't work; I'll get it fixed. That's it. Everything else is perfect, like brand new. I tinted the windows but that's preference, not need.
The point? First off, what is your sense of the car? I knew I was going to buy this truck just off the pictures I saw on Craiglist; I could just tell, I knew immediately, I drove over a deposit within 90 minutes of the truck hitting CL. I'd been looking for a couple months, waiting for this thing to show up; I knew what to pay ($1600 -- I stole it, truth be told; I'd have given a grand more for it without batting an eye), I knew what the other 1996 trucks looked like, what shape they were in, I knew what was mostly 'out there'.
So. Does this car ring your bell that way? Could you tell, just by looking? Do you know the previous owner, will the dealer put you in touch with him? My last pickup I bought used off a lot, when looking at it the first time I opened the glove box and got the owners name and location off some paperwork, called the guy, got the complete low-down on the truck.
If the dealer won't put you in touch with the prior owner of a car that could very easily have been driven hard for fun, I'd be awfully skeptical.
Mileage is a lot but it's not the whole story, look close, feel the car out, get a sense of it; this likely sounds woo woo but I promise you it's not. You've doubtless been in lots of people cars, gotten a sense of how this person treats this car, etc and etc. I could see someone buying that car you're looking at and not pounding it into the street, perhaps the prior owner drove like a citizen but was happy just knowing that the juice was there if/when they wanted to play or needed to get out of the way of something fast and easily.
I hope the car is the one for you, but I hope more that you'll not but it if it doesn't totally blow your skirt up, that you'll then use it as a learning experience, just a step on the road of looking for Your Next Car.
Good luck.
posted by dancestoblue at 9:11 PM on September 13, 2011

you'll not buy it ...
posted by dancestoblue at 9:15 PM on September 13, 2011

'practical enough'
The Audi TT? Really?
Buy a used BMW instead.
posted by bardic at 11:35 PM on September 13, 2011

This car will be in the shop every 2-3 months, minimum, as something new fails. If you're going to buy something with that much mileage on it, probably better to go Honda or Toyota and even then I wouldn't expect trouble free driving. 150K is about as long as most people keep cars for a reason, you'll be buying someone else's problem.
posted by doctor_negative at 5:08 AM on September 14, 2011

That the TT's Quattro system is more reliable than the other systems on the car is not particularly reassuring. No matter how well-built or engineered it is, an AWD system has more components and potential failure points than a two-wheel-drive system.
Eh. That's like worrying that a PC with 8GB of RAM will be more unreliable than a system with 4GB of RAM, which though technically true, really isn't something you need to worry about.
Also, since an AWD system is an excellent means of accident prevention, I'd wager that it's more likely to keep your car out of the shop. It's saved my ass at least once, and unlike other traction/stability control systems, leaves you in complete control of the vehicle.
(Also, amending my earlier post, the Haldex AWD used in the TT is indeed different from the Torsen AWD system used on Audi's larger vehicles. It is indeed a bit more complicated than the dead-simple Torsen system, which will basically keep on chugging along unless you somehow manage to break an axle. However, I maintain that the AWD is the last thing you need to worry about on this car.)
posted by schmod at 5:22 AM on September 14, 2011

Followup for posterity: I did not buy the TT. I decided we needed something a bit larger and with less miles, and settled on a 2010 Kia Forte Koup (!), the styling of which I liked. I found out after I bought it that it was designed by Peter Schreyer, the designer of the Audi TT!
Thanks for all of your input. A LOW-mileage Audi TT remains on my wish-list for a possible second car sometime in the (probably distant) future.
posted by The Deej at 8:38 AM on November 23, 2011

This thread is closed to new comments.

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