Buying from a neighborhood street car lot - a good idea? (credit, best)

['M']

Using a car service to buy a used car, and am sending emails to my sales person to get her moving to find my car. She was able to get me some pretty good financing so I don't want to go to other places who are going to run too many credit checks and ruin my credit from that. Meanwhile, here's what I wonder: As long as I have my own mechanic check any prospective car, is it a good practice to use my local neighborhood car lots to find the car I want? I suspect these car lots get their cars after they've been sold as less desirable at the car auction, so these may be the cars that aren't the best ones to select from, even if they look pretty darn good. Appreciate any and all feedback, please.

[pknopp]

Like with anything it's a crap shoot. New car dealers as a generalization don't want to deal with any car that isn't relatively new. They may get a great 10 year old car with lots of life yet but sell it off to a small lot as it's not something they want to resell.

Find a car and have a mechanic you trust look it over. Check the carfax. Look for maintenance records. Call the previous owner.

[Hemlock140]

Car dealership credit checks are not reported any more, it was considered unfair because people shop around and they won't negotiate without the credit check.

Yes, local lots like that are getting auction cars, but do have some decent ones at times. Pay the mechanic to check it out. I would also look at Autotrader and compare to what others are asking for the same make/model/year. I have used it on my smartphone even in the salesman's office with him sitting there.

[Ed_RDNC]

I strongly suspect that any car that is sold by the owner to anyone but another individual goes through the same process.
It's evaluated mechanically and cosmetically. Best of both, and young age will go to the new car dealer's used car lots. Less best would go to wholesale car auctions or get picked up by CarMax. The auctions further determine where the car's typically go. The professional car auction purchasers do their job and snap up the best values, starting from the best available combo of the above.
The only scenario where a neighborhood dealer would have a jem, is if one was given to him as a trade-in, and he decided he could sell it retail for more than he could profit from it going through a wholesale auction house. So the definition of "jem" would be his, not yours, and you'd still have better odds doing the research.

About the only time I can think of that bypasses the above logic is when you're dealing (pun intended) with a car that's rare. Some specific combination that you want based on your preferences and is hard to find anywhere. So you go to the local lot just like you'd go to national lots or even look on eBay Car and CL. IE: you must have a a 2-door in a rare color, that's otherwise be a common car.