Good points above. You need to have a bit of common sense buying cars like this. As I said, it makes absolutely no sense for the market to have so many old and ordinary cars magically around 50-100000km. I have also said I would much rather have a car with a comment than one that has had covered up repairs done to some unknown standard.
Some of these cars are over 10 years old. Some pushing closer to 20. Yet there are neverending supplies of repmobiles somehow at magical mileages... and presenting worse than many of the forum members cars that have triple the mileages. 100K maybe... 5xxxx? very difficult to believe.
A few of us joke about these cars going from the pole to the convent. People looking for these low mileage cars and 'accident free' cars actually don't know anything about cars quite frankly and this is why there is so much mileage tampering and why 'silent' backyard repairs happen. It's because that is the first thing the average person wants to see and hear. The mileage becomes a fixation and how the rest of the car presents doesn't really matter. Someone with a well taken care of 250000km car will struggle to sell it but the very same car (as
@Mytfine alludes to above) can be given a new mileage and fake history and suddenly the person buying it thinks its a good deal. I think many folks would be amazed at how well an enthusiast-owned 150000 or 250000km car can present. My old F10 M5 could have had 100000km knocked off it and it would have been believable vs. what else was out there.
Accident history is another one: comforting lies trump reality. You can often see shoddy repairs but as long as the car 'has no comments' that is all that buyers want because they rely on the 'rubber stamp' of not having comments rather than using their own 5 senses. There is nothing wrong with buying a car that might have (shock horror) had a panel or two redone/sprayed in 10-15 years of its existence. There is something very wrong buying a 'comment free' car that has visible drip lines and fish eyes in the paint.
The guys doing this are absolute scum and have holier-than-thou or take-it-or-leave-it attitudes when you engage them as well. When they are approaching you to buy a car they come with hard luck stories about how they need a car urgently or how their dead father or mother had one just like it or how they need a deep discount for some or the other reason, usually because it has such high mileage. 2 days later it's for sale with a different mileage, different history and a very long flowery story to go with this "amazing example".
Just a bit of logic: These are not M cars, they are not special cars, the majority of their lives were pre-COVID/WFH era and we live in South Africa - a country where you generally are doing large mileages if you are in any way employed (and let's face it, if the original owners bought a 125i they weren't exactly in the C-suite working remotely).
Even if it is genuinely at a low mileage there are 'sitting car' problems and age related maintenance that will be necessary. Whatever the case, there must be some reason that a car like the one above has not covered mileage in 11 years. It has the same mileage as my fairly lightly used F90 M5 which is half it's age. It is being used in a similar way to dedicated track and weekend cars (and something like my 4C or a GT4) if the mileage was real.
Guys are telling themselves fairytales with 90s and 2000s BMWs that have these low mileages. At the same time the. market is collectively unaware of what exactly a 200 or 300000km car should look like... they just know they need to be terrified of high mileages, despite them happily buying those same cars with an 'adjusted' 100 or 150000km on them
These are the pitfalls of dealing with third party sellers in SA these days. You can literally turn back mileage in 15 minutes even on VERY modern cars.
