Until you get it home, it’s near impossible to tell what’s wrong with it.

Just bought a car for my wife to take to New York.  I had test driven it, I had examined it with my inexperienced eye, and I bought it, mostly due to lack of time.

The mechanic calls after checking it out with a looooong list of problems with the car, including things like a broken axle, transmission leak, oil leak, and 3 tires worn down so far they very seriously need replacing.

You can imagine the dollar signs running through my head right now, but the more important bit is wondering how on earth I was supposed to know better. Cars are monumentally complex, and people selling me the car probably didn’t have a clue about half of what was wrong with it.  Yes, they misrepresented the car to me, no I can’t say confidently that it’s their fault or that they did it on purpose.

So what does a person do?  I tried my best to do research on cars, but for a person like me, it seems we’re left to luck when buying a car.

How does an inexperienced person buy a used car with confidence?