For Sale Buyer Alert - 1999 Land Cruiser in TN (1 Viewer)

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Year
1999
Vehicle Model
  1. 100 Series
Location
United States
Just FYI, there's a Land Cruiser in Collierville, TN listed on FB Marketplace as a 2 owner vehicle, that's actually a 5 owner vehicle. I told the owner and he fought back and forth with me on it, then shrugged his shoulders and left it listed as a 2 owner. Kind of shady which is unfortunate because the truck looks clean, but it's priced at $16.5k w/ 270k miles... :| Even if it was a two owner vehicle that's a laugh even in this market, but figured someone might want to be aware of the ownership situation.
 
How on earth do you know it’s a 5 owner vehicle?
 
How on earth do you know it’s a 5 owner vehicle?
A CarFax report that wouldn't make sense for it to be a two owner vehicle (sold 4 times, all at or above 60k intervals). There's one questionable one that could have just been something weird with CarFax (very little change in mileage from Owner 3 to Owner 4), but the rest seems pretty clear to me unless I'm missing something.
 
Carfax isn't infallible. He might be shady, but Carfax might also be wrong. Each is just as likely in my mind.
I agree (and my recent post in Chit-Chat has far more to say about how much I despise CarFax) and to be clear, I don't think the owner was attempting to be shady when he listed it, but he kept pushing back on questions I'd have about the CarFax. He said something about it being transferred between dealers multiple times being the reason it showed him as the 5th owner. He also stated that he had replaced the leather on the seats but I found an old listing (where he bought it) and the leather had been replaced. I asked him nicely about all of this because I was interested in the truck assuming he would come down on his price. I didn't get the impression that he was an outright scammer, but he definitely was not a forthcoming individual either. Truck does appear to be clean and he was adamant that I could take it to a Toyota dealer in TN and they'd find all service was up to date. He also told me that for a similar truck I'd have to "pay $9-12k and put another couple thousand in it" which means he thinks his own truck is worth $11-14k...

Overall interacting with him was fine but I wanted Mud members to know that it is not a 2 owner truck and it has been brought to his attention.
 
HARDLY worthy of a "Buyer Beware."

And without a VIN, this thread is of little value. Why not just post up the CF report?


EDIT: And just to be clear... Buyer Beware threads can be useful tools for Mud shoppers, but they gotta have some meat to them.
 
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HARDLY worthy of a "Buyer Beware."

And without a VIN, this thread is of little value. Why not just post up the CF report?


EDIT: And just to be clear... Buyer Beware threads can be useful tools for Mud shoppers, but they gotta have some meat to them.
Fair point. Wasn’t trying to be alarmist just wasn’t really sure what to title it. Changed to “Buyer Alert” - not sure that’s any better or worse. 🤷‍♂️

VIN: JT3HT05J2X0057763

I can post the CF when I get to my PC.
 
CarFax Attached.
 

Attachments

  • CARFAX Vehicle History Report for this ...pdf
    952.8 KB · Views: 72
Positives: Mostly dealer serviced. Mostly Georgia owned.
Negatives: Timing belt ever been done? Seller owned for six months. Asking price is absurd.
 
Positives: Mostly dealer serviced. Mostly Georgia owned.
Negatives: Timing belt ever been done? Seller owned for six months. Asking price is absurd.
Yea, my initial plan was build report with the seller so that when he sobered up I'd be first in line to buy for a reasonable price. Once I realized the owner situation and he started to be a bit of a dick, I decided I don't care to deal with him and moved on.
 
Looks like 3 owners to me. But at the end of the day, the number of owners doesn't necessarily matter. You could have a "5 owner" 250k mile LC over here thats a great truck and a true, 1-owner 250k mile LC over here that is a piece of junk. Rust and condition are more important. But 16,500 for a 99 with 270k is just stupid high. Sounds like the OP was just using the owner discrepancy as leverage to get him to lower the price. Nothing wrong with that, its just business/negotiating tactics.
 
Looks like 3 owners to me. But at the end of the day, the number of owners doesn't necessarily matter. You could have a "5 owner" 250k mile LC over here thats a great truck and a true, 1-owner 250k mile LC over here that is a piece of junk. Rust and condition are more important. But 16,500 for a 99 with 270k is just stupid high. Sounds like the OP was just using the owner discrepancy as leverage to get him to lower the price. Nothing wrong with that, its just business/negotiating tactics.
Agreed on all of the above except for the last couple sentences. I wasn't trying to use the discrepancy to lower the price - I wanted a 1-2 owner vehicle with solid service records. I have no interest in the truck both because it's not what I'm looking for and the price is outrageous. Wasn't trying to use it as leverage but if someone else on here wants to use that information to do so I wouldn't hold it against them. At the end of the day the truck is listed as a two owner vehicle specifically because the owner (and buyers) believe that has value - whether right or wrong.
 
Agreed on all of the above except for the last couple sentences. I wasn't trying to use the discrepancy to lower the price - I wanted a 1-2 owner vehicle with solid service records. I have no interest in the truck both because it's not what I'm looking for and the price is outrageous. Wasn't trying to use it as leverage but if someone else on here wants to use that information to do so I wouldn't hold it against them. At the end of the day the truck is listed as a two owner vehicle specifically because the owner (and buyers) believe that has value - whether right or wrong.
10-4, I still haven't seen the actual listing, just the CF, but if they were trying to hype up the 2 owner thing, then you call them on it, and they clam up, yeah thats a turn off. I guess my main point is, I wouldn't get too hung up on how many previous owners an LC is reported to have had. Half the time the info is wrong. And all things being equal, a good cruiser is worth the same whether its had 2 or 3 owners. Its not really a value-add or detract in my book.
 
I can't say I've ever understood why folks care how many owners a vehicle had. Condition is everything, I'd rather 10 people loved it than one person abused it.
 
I can't say I've ever understood why folks care how many owners a vehicle had. Condition is everything, I'd rather 10 people loved it than one person abused it.
Number of owners doesn't inherently have value. However, the probability that someone owned a vehicle for 22 years and abused it the whole time is so low as to almost be outright impossible. The much more probable situation is that a person that owned a vehicle for 22 years "bought it for life", kept up on all routine maintenance, has records of all of said maintenance, and likely did preventative maintenance as well. On the other hand, if a car changed hands every 2-3 years for 22 years it's not impossible that it was taken care of, but it's much more likely that routine maintenance was ignored - either because they didn't plan on keeping the vehicle for a long period of time, or because they were unaware/misinformed on what maintenance had been done by previous owner(s).

Again, it doesn't have inherent value but if you had the choice between two LCs where everything was exactly the same (miles, condition, year, even maintenance history), would you buy the truck that had 1 owner, or the truck that had 10? I'm not going to be a stickler on vehicles under 4-5 owners, but if someone claims their truck has X owners, I treat that the same as them claiming it has X miles, or X maintenance has been done. If it turns out they are mistaken, or misrepresenting their vehicle, that's going to lower the value of their vehicle in my eyes at minimum.
 
I found with some of the long-owned Land Cruisers that the owner ends up letting their teenagers and even college-aged children use the Land Cruiser after it s 10 to 15 years old. When that happens, the maintenance still is kept up generally but the day-to-day use is much harder on the vehicle.

There are just so many variables I just don't know that it's a reliable predictor of quality.
 
The "value" of a 1-owner vehicle, IMO, has always been that someone with the means to buy a LC brand new, has the means to maintenance it properly. That said, it's the maintenance that matters, regardless of whether it was one owner or five. Some of the guys here do far more for their vehicles than a Toyota or Lexus dealership would ever recommend.
 
I've been trying to negotiate a deal with an original owner of a 97 40th anv. 80 series. They are letting their son drive it now. But the thing will need at least $2K in rust repair and fixing oil leaks and who knows what else. Just because it's the original owner doesn't mean they took care of it.
 

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