High previous owners in AMG cars

[a1butch]

Hi all.

Is high number of owners pretty common in C63s? I have inquired about several 2012/2013 saloons/estates and I'm surprised how many cars have 3/4+ previous owners.
Would that put many people off (price depending I would imagine)?

 

[brucemillar]

Hi all.

Is high number of owners pretty common in C63s? I have inquired about several 2012/2013 saloons/estates and I'm surprised how many cars have 3/4+ previous owners.
Would that put many people off (price depending I would imagine)?

It would not personally put me off, providing everything else is in order.

The C63 is an itch that has to be scratched for lots of people. Once scratched many find it is not all they wanted, in an everyday driving car. Fuel costs, maintenance costs, repair costs etc. That is just one issue. My friend bought a beautiful Wagon, and his wife would not drive it, after she got fed up being targeted by boy racers at every set of lights. Car had to go after three months.

Mrs M is not happy with noise of my C55 believing that it attracts all the wrong looks if she is trying to park in a Multi-Storey.

 

[markjay]

That's a tricky one.

I have just viewed a high-spec 3-years old car (not AMG) and it had 3 previous owners.

Makes you wonder why did 3 different people shift the car after only one year? Is anything wrong with it? Of course it might be simply down to circumstances, but the question mark remains.

When driving the car, it smelled like a smoker's car, the COMAND screen was badly scratched and shiny plastic surfaces in the cabin suggested a major effort to clean the car prior to putting it on the forecourt (which is possibly how the COMAND screen got scratched in the first place...).

There were 3 different makes of tyres on the car.... the 'heavy used' cabin, cigarette smell and mix of tyres suggest to me that whoever owned the car did not care to much about it.

This is in line with 3 owners each one owning the car only for a relatively brief period of time, and treating it like it wasn't theirs....

So my view? 3 owners in 3 years is not a good sign.... and even if there are good reasons for this, and the car was well looked after, come sell time potential buyers will ask the very same questions again.

So personally...... I would avoid it.

PS - in some cases company cars or cars on finance are then sold to the same person who drove them from new, and some care were pre-registered by the dealer - so you need to look closely to ensure that the car actually had 3 or 4 different owners.

 

[abar121]

It wouldn't worry me. It's just that type of car.

It's very common for 911s etc to have six or seven owners in the first ten years. Buy on condition.

 

[Deleted member 6183]

Given the high number of cars supplied under lease, HP or whatever, one or more owners may have had no option but to surrender ownership.

 

[KillerHERTZ]

I'm the 11th on mine. They are expensive cars to run.

 

[a1butch]

It would not personally put me off, providing everything else is in order.

The C63 is an itch that has to be scratched for lots of people. Once scratched many find it is not all they wanted, in an everyday driving car. Fuel costs, maintenance costs, repair costs etc. That is just one issue. My friend bought a beautiful Wagon, and his wife would not drive it, after she got fed up being targeted by boy racers at every set of lights. Car had to go after three months.

Mrs M is not happy with noise of my C55 believing that it attracts all the wrong looks if she is trying to park in a Multi-Storey.

Perhaps my only stumbling block, the Mrs may have to drive the C63 from time to time.
Coming from TVR which is a very narrow world you can generally track down previous owners. But I agree condition is the most important driver.

 

[MikeInWimbledon]

Gresham's Law

"In economics, Gresham's law is a monetary principle stating that "bad money drives out good". For example, if there are two forms of commodity money in circulation, which are accepted by law as having similar face value, the more valuable commodity will disappear from circulation."

Low owner cars sell fast. (For good reasons...as you probably know)

Multiple owner cars take longer to sell....so when you look, there will be more multiple owner cars available, as their owners hang out for something similar to the best prices they've seen.

The same applies to good old "full MB main dealer history"

But in general, sporty expensive cars do get far more owners. People get frightened out by the depreciation and maintenance costs and (cough) family circumstances change (nudge, nudge). Same applies to all the usual suspects: Porsche, Ferrari, top end BMW.

 

[markjay]

So perhaps this is the norm for AMG (and other high-performance marques) cars...

Said that I did go for a test drive in the (non-AMG) 3 years old car with 3 previous owners, i.e. I was hopeful that it was still a good car.

But it wasn't... it turned out to be what you would expect a '3 previous owners' to be, if you listen to the sceptics.

It was a 2014 C-Class loaded with options - pano roof, COMAND, heated seats, etc - all of which are options on the basic Executive SE spec - and it makes you wonder who specs-up such an expensive car (in relative terms - obviously it's not a C63) then sells it after just one year?

 

[Deleted member 37751]

With a car as common as the C63 you've got a better chance of picking one up with low owners but it's not uncommon at all for say a five year old powerful car to have five or more owners.

Also worth keeping in mind that a lot of cars are pre registered so it's not that uncommon for a three year old 'standard' car to be on three owners - one pre registered, the second owner for years one & two and the third owner at two years old who sells as the warranty runs out.

 

[Petrol Pete]

I agree with others on here, AMG 'is a itch to be scratched', I scratched my (low budget) itch with a 10 year old C55 with 117000 miles on the clock and 5+ previous owners on the log book (I suspect it has had more). The running cost are obviously WAY lower than a 63 AMG , but still substantial for those on a tighter budget.

I bought mine based on the service history and general condition of the car, not on how many owners it had had in the past.

It's a car....not a future wife and mother to your children.

 

[Dave.tam]

So perhaps this is the norm for AMG (and other high-performance marques) cars...

Said that I did go for a test drive in the (non-AMG) 3 years old car with 3 previous owners, i.e. I was hopeful that it was still a good car.

But it wasn't... it turned out to be what you would expect a '3 previous owners' to be, if you listen to the sceptics.

It was a 2014 C-Class loaded with options - pano roof, COMAND, heated seats, etc - all of which are options on the basic Executive SE spec - and it makes you wonder who specs-up such an expensive car (in relative terms - obviously it's not a C63) then sells it after just one year?

I did just that markjay.

I had a 2014 on a 63 plate C180 SE Exec with premium plus packs. Only had it about 16 months before trading it in for my current C. I must say that anyone who got my used car got a VERY nice example

Very low mileage, only myself as a previous owner and immaculate both inside and out. Think I'd only done about 6/7k miles in it when my local dealer made me an offer that was too good to pass up on our new cars.

 

[st13phil]

My take on it is that everyone knows (or at least should know) that owning a big-engine AMG car is going to cost lots more than running another high performance car that's "further down the food chain" for want of a better description. AMG car ownership is also aspirational for lots of people who want to scratch the itch of a high-performance V8.

Add the two together, and there are a sizeable number of people who become owners by stretching to the top end of their budget. They buy a car, perhaps with a warranty, to provide peace of mind regarding the potential to incur a ruinous repair bill and then run it for a few months after the warranty expires. They then get out of it on the basis that they've had lots of fun and it hasn't cost them a small fortune yet. It's the (in reality) low-level potential for eye-watering expenditure if something breaks that drives the desire to get out while they can.

Hence lots of previous owners of AMG V8's not being at all unusual.

 

[roger574]

+1 for buying on condition.

It took me six months to find my W210 E55 and the reason I bought it was down to its absence of rust and presence of service history. I first saw it online and, at first, discounted it as it had higher mileage than I was looking for (also the MoT history seemed a bit odd) but, after talking to the owner (who turned out to be an MB indy), I went to see the car and bought it on the spot. Best decision I've ever made car-wise!

I don't buy cars very often but I think you can get a feel for how well looked after a car has been just from talking to the seller and looking for tell-tale signs of neglect. I can remember going to look at a 7-series BMW a few years ago which had 70,000 miles on the clock but the the pedal rubbers were almost worn through and the buttons on both key-fobs were smooth. I walked away from that one...

 

[Brunty88]

I used to change my car every 9-12 months
My amg has a few previous owners but has all the specs service and miles so it didn't put me off

 

[ecain63]

3 owners perfectly normal for a 3 or 4 year sports car. People with sports cars generally have itchy feet

 

[JimGreen]

In the past ten years, I've had five high performance cars, nothing wrong with any of them, I just moved onward and upward.

M3 E46
M5 E60
Audi S4 V8
C63 AMG (2012) - My previous C63, currently for sale at a traders and a great car with no faults. 62 (2012) Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG 6.3 (457bhp) MCT 7S AMG

But only one have I gone on to buy a newer model of one of these cars...... and that was the C63 AMG. I tried a few high performance saloons, including the latest M5 V8 Twin Turbo, but decided that the C63 AMG was a better car, so spent over a month searching for a late low mileage example of the 6.3ltr, and after a month one came up at a mercedes dealership and I snapped it up. You have to be willing to travel.....lots, and view as many as you can before making your decision.

People move onward and upward, don't be put off by a few more owners than your average car.

 

[AMGeed]

My take on it is that everyone knows (or at least should know) that owning a big-engine AMG car is going to cost lots more than running another high performance car that's "further down the food chain" for want of a better description. AMG car ownership is also aspirational for lots of people who want to scratch the itch of a high-performance V8.

Add the two together, and there are a sizeable number of people who become owners by stretching to the top end of their budget. They buy a car, perhaps with a warranty, to provide peace of mind regarding the potential to incur a ruinous repair bill and then run it for a few months after the warranty expires. They then get out of it on the basis that they've had lots of fun and it hasn't cost them a small fortune yet. It's the (in reality) low-level potential for eye-watering expenditure if something breaks that drives the desire to get out while they can.

Hence lots of previous owners of AMG V8's not being at all unusual.

I'd agree with all of this and add, sometimes the thought of actually owning an AMG clouds the prospective owners decision on the cost of running it. It's all very well having one, but I'm sure there are a few owners out there who found the fuel consumption alone was too much as a daily driver and moved it on.

Not an AMG, but I recall buying my Sierra Cosworth some years ago from a 19 year old student who had almost bankrupted himself just to get into ownership of a Cossie. Reality hit when the monthly insurance payments took away too many beer tokens. I came along at the right time for him

An AMG having a few owners wouldn't put me off provided the service record held up.

 

[a1butch]

In the past ten years, I've had five high performance cars, nothing wrong with any of them, I just moved onward and upward.

M3 E46
M5 E60
Audi S4 V8
C63 AMG (2012) - My previous C63, currently for sale at a traders and a great car with no faults. 62 (2012) Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG 6.3 (457bhp) MCT 7S AMG

But only one have I gone on to buy a newer model of one of these cars...... and that was the C63 AMG. I tried a few high performance saloons, including the latest M5 V8 Twin Turbo, but decided that the C63 AMG was a better car, so spent over a month searching for a late low mileage example of the 6.3ltr, and after a month one came up at a mercedes dealership and I snapped it up. You have to be willing to travel.....lots, and view as many as you can before making your decision.

People move onward and upward, don't be put off by a few more owners than your average car.

Jim, what made you move into a newer C63?

 

[JimGreen]

I just love them, for me they do everything I want, performance luxury and I feel they're a real classic. To move up to the new C63 was just too much of a financial commitment and I just didn't want to spend that kind of money.

I was looking for something that would keep me happy for longer than I normally keep a car, as I want to hold onto this for some time as I know it'll keep me entertained.