Hi everyone, I am just beginning to immerse myself into learning all I can about the 308 series with the goal of buying one in the next couple of years. This is a wonderful site with lots of great information, but I wanted to see what people thought about the pros and cons of buying a high mileage 308 or a low mileage 308. There have been several 308's for sale in the normal Internet places recently that claim to have well under 10,000 miles. Is that a good thing, generally speaking, or a bad thing? At the same time, would a 308 with goods records but more than 100,000 miles be all that bad? You see how confused I am. I understand the whole thing about rubber bushings and belts rotting from lack of use, but is it a big enough problem that cars with extremely lows miles should be avoided? Sorry if this has been discussed ad nauseum, but I didn't find much addressing this particular topic by searching. Thanks! Mike
Try searching "garage queen". There's even more written on the subject than Art has written on why we're all going to hell because W got re-elected. BTW, welcome to Fchat.
I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but many people here feel that a "mid mileage" car is the best, meaning not too high and DEFINITELY not too low. A high mileage car has at least been driving and probably runs well. A low mileage "garage queen" will have all kinds of problems (assuming you actually are going to drive it) because belts, hoses, gaskets and everything rubber will have dried out from not being used. You will spend a lot of time and money making the thing stop leaking various fluids and safe to drive. Old fuel lines in 308's are bad news as they are prone to engine fires when they leak. I bought my 308 with 43K miles, and that's a good number. I'm thinking about buying a Mondial that has 76K and is a good "driver." I don't think that's too many miles. But a 308 with 10K...be careful. These are old cars and if it only has 10K miles on it, the car has been sitting and sitting for ages. God knows what will break the first couple of times you drive it. Birdman
Be advised on how easy it is to remove the speedo cable and thus a nice low mileage car. Many of these cars may have alot more miles than you could imagine. Buyer beware.
I bought my car with 64,000 miles on it... all service had been done before I bought. Not to say that doesn't effect value but I wanted a car that had use that I would be ready to open a vein over every it got dirty or had a stone chip... I now have 73,000 on it and it's been great!
In '99 I bought an '85 308 with 14,500 miles. I now have 22,000 miles on it and have spent around $10,000.00 getting it right. The first year was trouble free, then cooling problem, oil leak problem. It's finally running great.
Hi everyone! Thanks for all the great help, and judge4re, thanks for the search tip. That helped a lot. I found lots of great annecdotal information to use. I'm still not sure where I stand on this issue, but at least I can look at with my eyes open now. Mike
Condition, condition, condition!!!! This is what matters. Have a PPI and don't be overly concerned w/ mileage. I got a fantastic car it had 47K when I bought it 3 1/2 years ago. Now it has 60K it never let me down and still looks and runs like new.
Bought mine with 48K, now has 52K. Do the math... for an 84, thats less than 3K miles per year, which ain't a lot of miles. Drive, drive, drive!
