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I recently purchased a car from a Honda Dealer. I see that the odometer reading is already 230 miles. When I asked them about this, they replied saying that it was because the vehicle is transferred from another lot.

Should I be worried about the 230 miles driven?

Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2
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user33636
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4 Answers4

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tl dr: No.

Over the lifespan of your vehicle, 230 miles is absolutely nothing (especially on Hondas, lol). At most, this starts to get you to the break in point of the engine. You'll still need to keep the regular maintenance on the car at the given points, but overall it really means nothing.

As far as warranty goes, it doesn't start until the car is purchased. If the car was a demo model (say the owner of the dealership was using it) and it had 1500 miles on it, the warranty starts when the vehicle is sold. It is in essence considered a "new car". The dealership puts this mileage and date information into the Honda database and this is the point at which things start counting.

Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2
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I wouldn't worry about it - "new" cars quite often accumulate a few miles pre-delivery. Usually this is the vehicle being moved between lots (as the dealer said) and various movements around storage facilities. A friend of mine has worked for some time at the main Jaguar Landrover factory here in the UK and from what he has described cars get moved around the extensive site quite frequently so if this was a car you bought from stock as opposed to a specific factory order then it will easily have accumulated a fair few while it was in storage.

230 miles is above average but could easily be accounted for by transferring the car without the aid of a car transporter, this wouldn't be unreasonable in the circumstances where it was the only car being transferred at that time and there wasn't a suitable transporter available or if they were looking to save on the expense. Especially if it was coming from dealer stock as sending a driver to move it between sites is going to be far, far cheaper than using a truck.

Some manufacturers actually accommodate this sort of thing by allowing one-time "resets" to the odometer before delivery, this is usually controlled by a combination of the limited use nature and a maximum mileage in order to prevent abuse from those seeking to "clock" the car. It's highly unlikely that those 230 miles are going to make one iota of difference to the condition of the car or anything like that. If you are otherwise happy with the car then I'd just chalk it up as a curiosity and move on.

motosubatsu
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Well, since you already paid for the thing and there's not typically a huge window of time to return it, the answer to your stated question, according to the Serenity Prayer, is to accept with serenity the things you cannot change.

What you may also be asking however, is "is there a legitimate reason to have so many miles on a car that hasn't been owned before?"

Yes.

It could have been from moving cars from dealer to dealer, but in my somewhat limited experience that happens on a car hauler-- especially if we're talking about another lot 3+ hours away, unless you live absolutely in the middle of nowhere.

The miles aren't high enough for it to have been a "demo car" that a dealership employee uses, so my guess would be that someone took it for an extended test drive, like over a weekend.

Another thing that would sometimes add miles is the pre-delivery inspection, but we're looking at maybe one or two miles.

seizethecarp
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Another source for the miles is test drives. Consider how many miles you put on the car during your test drive, then think about how many other people may have done the same. Unless you ordered the car from the factory (which it doesn't sound like you did), there's been at least a few test drives, along with un/load from any transport semis, basic movement around the dealership lot, and other short "trips" that eventually can add up.

As others said, this usually isn't something to be concerned with. The only time I would be concerned is if there's Something Wrong with it, which I'm assuming isn't the case, since you bought it.