Modding and Resale

[champignon]

This post is not in reference to any present or past for sales listings on this board.

Today I had an experience which might possibly be useful to others on this board so here goes.

I'm looking for one additional manual transmission performance BMW vehicle to complete my little "collection" of BMWs that drive like BMWs used to drive. I thought I had found just what I was looking for, a low mileage specimen in a color I liked that had been for sale for a while and that I could pick up at a relatively good price. The pictures looked good, the car had more or less the configuration that I would want, and I was ready to start serious price negotiations with the seller, a second hand car dealer with good online ratings that I thought might be a dealer I could do business with over the phone.

I don't want to further identify the specific vehicle or the seller, but let's just say it was a member of either the 1 or 3 Series and had been produced in the last few years.

So I called the dealer and spoke with someone who was obviously very familiar with the vehicle and had driven it. He chose his words very carefully, but it was pretty clear that they were trying to unload the car with no profit or even a loss at this point since it had been on the lot for "a while." After a bit of a pause, the gentleman told me the car had been modified. I asked, "in what way?" So he gave me a long list of performance mods that were on the vehicle and he told me that at present they were all working OK and they had not noted any problems with any of them.

I should note that the car still has 2 years of full mfr. warranty remaining.

I wrote down the names of the mods, and even recognized the names of most of the mod manufacturers. I thanked the sales person for his honesty and told him I would get back to him. Then I started to look up more information on what exactly had been installed on this car.

A little web searching showed that these were some pretty involved mods that involved removing body parts, engine parts, etc., installing the mods, then putting the car back together. There were all kinds of caveats on the instructions advising the purchaser/installer to seek professional help in installing them. The required list of tools for installation was very large, and these were not always the sorts of tools most people have lying around in their garages. It was pretty obvious that unless the person installing these things was really competent, there was a lot of potential for doing a lot of damage, damage that presumably would not be covered by BMW when or if the car was returned to the dealer for warranty repairs.

A quick lookover of the Carfax in fact showed that this 2 year old vehicle had not been to a BMW dealer's service department in more than a year, and any work done had been done in independent facilities. On the last two service visits to the dealer, a year ago, there were repairs done to systems that should not need warranty repairs in the first year of a car's existence. One can only guess why, but reluctance on the part of the owner/modder to present this modded car to the dealer's service dept., or refusal of the dealer to work on the car may well have figured into this.

Bottom line, after about 3 minutes thought, I rejected buying this car that in all other respects would have been an attractive car to buy, in spite of its multi thousands of dollars of added components that were being thrown in, and maybe these components were actually good and functional and did something good for the car? Who knows? The second hand car dealer had no knowledge of who had done the work, when it was done, or what risks were there to the unwary purchaser who would inherit this stuff.

I have personally been burned to the tune of about $5K on a modded M3 I bought not long ago, so obviously I am a bit touchy when it comes to this subject. People who are considering modifying their vehicles, especially vehicles still in warranty, need to think about the potential downsides to what they are doing, and what this will do to resale on their cars when they inevitably decide to resell them. Also, perhaps, they should consider the poor schmuck who might end up with the car after they have lost interest in it.

[COChris]

Good call.

I looked at one for sale last winter that had a ton of aftermarket equipment like a big brake kit, software tuning, coilovers, intake, exhaust.

It would have been a blast to drive but considering he didn't have any stock parts to sell with it, I walked.

If the car can easily be put back to stock then mod away. Otherwise I do see it hurting the resale.

[kskpsu]

Agree with your logic. If your intent was to do these mods, or something similar to them, then the car is a steal. Basis the criteria of what you were looking for, it's not a good fit. I had a similar predicament searching for a low mile RS4. I ended up passing on a car that was cheaper and with less miles because it had an APR Supercharger, with none of the OEM parts remaining. The car I ended up buying had some mods too, but they were more in line with what I would consider doing, like a full MTM exhaust. So mods and their value (or liability for resale value) will always be in the eye of the beholder.

[champignon]

Originally Posted by kskpsu

Agree with your logic. If your intent was to do these mods, or something similar to them, then the car is a steal. Basis the criteria of what you were looking for, it's not a good fit. I had a similar predicament searching for a low mile RS4. I ended up passing on a car that was cheaper and with less miles because it had an APR Supercharger, with none of the OEM parts remaining. The car I ended up buying had some mods too, but they were more in line with what I would consider doing, like a full MTM exhaust. So mods and their value (or liability for resale value) will always be in the eye of the beholder.

In the particular case I wrote about, the car still had more than a couple of years of remaining full mfr. warranty, which almost certainly had been voided by the modding. Since part of the purchase price calculation used in determining used car resale values considers the mileage on the vehicle plus any remaining warranty that is present, those mods represented a clear-cut value-deduct from whatever used car pricing engine one was using.

So even if you wanted the mods that were there, you would have to buy the car knowing that the warranty was voided. If one is OK with that, then fine.

Also, I don't think that a car like that is suitable to be purchased over the internet without personally having it inspected by someone who knows how to evaluate the installation of engine mods, such as whether they were well selected and whether the were installed correctly. So for a long distance purchase, I wouldn't even consider it even if I wanted the particular mods, unless I was willing to fly out there in person to inspect it, or knew someone in the area where the car was located whom I trusted who could inspect it.