Pre-Purchase Inspection at Johnny's Automotive

We work for you, the buyer. Nobody else in a used car transaction does, and that changes what gets said out loud. A test drive tells you how a car feels for fifteen minutes on roads somebody else picked. It doesn't tell you what the computer has stored, whether the carpet was ever wet, or how much brake and tire you're about to buy.

On the lift, we look at the things a walkaround can't reach. Water damage leaves a trail: silt in the spare tire well, a line on the seatbelt webbing when it's pulled all the way out, green or white corrosion inside connectors and on ground straps under the carpet, a musty smell, or an interior that looks newer than the car. Florida gets a hurricane season every year, and flood damaged cars do come back onto the market afterward, sometimes retitled through another state. That's not a reason to avoid used cars. It's a reason to look at one before the money moves.

We check the body for evidence of repairs: paint thickness that jumps from panel to panel, overspray in the door jambs, gaps that don't match side to side, fasteners that have been turned. Past repair work isn't automatically a problem. Undisclosed structural work is a different thing, and you deserve to know which one you're looking at.

Then we scan it. Stored codes, pending codes, and whether the readiness monitors have set, because a computer that was cleared recently hasn't finished checking itself yet. Brakes, tires, and fluids get measured, and those numbers become facts you can negotiate with.

You get a report with photos. Take it back to the seller and talk about price, or walk away. Walking away is a perfectly good outcome, and when that's what the car deserves, we'll say so plainly. There's always another car.