[Chili Palmer]

I recently purchased a 2011 CPO BMW 550i, but in the last few weeks I've found things that make me wonder about the condition of the car before it was bought by the dealer. We were told the car was a previous executive car - I assumed it was owned or driven by someone from their corporate office. The things I've noticed are that both the front and rear fascias have been repainted, all the wheels have been refinished (and not too well), the kidney grilles weren't sitting right in their openings and come to find out that most of the tabs holding them in were broken. The dead pedal which is stainless with rubber nubbies sticking out is scratched all to hell, almost like the guy was wearing sandpaper on the soles of his shoes. The car only had 18,000 mile on it, but it seems like it had a hard life.

I love the car, but I feel the some of this stuff should have been disclosed prior to selling the car. They did show me the CarFax and Expirion reports, but nothing was listed. Should the repaints have been on the reports - they did make a big stink about a scratch I wanted fixed, they told me that if they did any paintwork it would have to be reported to CarFax and Expirion. So why wasn't the previous work reported?

Do I have any recourse?

I used to put the higher end car dealers on a more scrupulous level, but as I can see they are all scheisters.

[Losco]

If the shop does not put the repairs into the system, CarFax won't show up anything on the car, so it's important to double check for any signs of repair. Since it's CPO, you could ask for repairs with the warranty...

[gatoman39]

Executive car means little. You assumed things, which is a no-no in used car buying. A carfax has a lot of important information, but it's not the bible. Many if not most used cars have their bumpers resprayed, but that doesn't mean that they were in accidents. That will never show up on a carfax.
It's incumbent on the buyer to have a PPI (pre purchase inspection) done by a third party. You have no recourse as the seller did nothing wrong. CPO is a marketing tool with a extended limited warranty, not a guarantee of a perfect car. Chalk it up to lesson learned.

[Chili Palmer]

Originally Posted by gatoman39

Executive car means little. You assumed things, which is a no-no in used car buying. A carfax has a lot of important information, but it's not the bible. Many if not most used cars have their bumpers resprayed, but that doesn't mean that they were in accidents. That will never show up on a carfax.
It's incumbent on the buyer to have a PPI (pre purchase inspection) done by a third party. You have no recourse as the seller did nothing wrong. CPO is a marketing tool with a extended limited warranty, not a guarantee of a perfect car. Chalk it up to lesson learned.

Lesson learned the hard way.

[gatoman39]

Originally Posted by Chili Palmer

Lesson learned the hard way.

Sorry to be so blunt, but you're not the first person that this has happened to. A lot of people are pressed for time or let their emotional attachment cloud their rational decision making. Plus dealers put pressure on people to close the deal.

I would say, have the little things repaired. Get a stanless steel dead pedal and adjust the grills and get the wheels corrected and you should be good.