[jimhelm]

Originally Posted by JamesB

You can be lucky with used cars.

In 2008, I bought a 1998 Nissan Pathfinder that came fitted with an aftermarket snow plow blade. A year later, the left front suspension tower almost completely separated from the bodywork, and the brake master cylinder and steering shaft were all that were keeping it in place. The car was still drivable, but it was one bump away from simultaneously losing front suspension, brakes, and steering. I parked it while I tried to figure out how to fix the suspension problem.

After it sat on the driveway for a couple of years, I decided that it just wasn't worth the time and effort of making the repair, and in late 2011, I was about to call a wrecker to come and take it away when I did a search on the internet and discovered that a recall for the very same suspension failure problem had been issued in mid-2011.

Nissan would either repair the suspension tower failure, or in extreme cases, make an offer to buy back the vehicle.

In the end Nissan declared my vehicle unrepairable and offered to buy it back for more than what I paid for it (and certainly for far more than it was worth). Who am I to argue with a deal like that. I still have the snow plow assembly and now that we've seen that we don't really need it any more, I'll stick on the market just before next winter.

We had over 20 of them in our service lot back then.