Yesterday I took it to Sewell Lexus, and they took a 2 hour look at it and scrolled through the history. Since around 80k, its been in for service about every 5-15 thousand miles untill about 500 miles before now. They did the bodywork there, and there was some hail damage, which does show up on the trim around the windows if you look closely enough.
Things I remember replaced were ball joint(s), steering column,a few timing belts, water pumps, steering pump, various fluids and filters & flushes, differential fluid, a 90k service and 60k service, brakes, tires and a brakelight. No repair work on the transmission.
In manual shift mode, I cant get it to go into L, or shift below 2 (it just stays at 2) I don't know if thats normal or not because the transmission seems smarter than I. In the trunk, does the trunk liner fit completely under the metal of the back of the car? or are there places where you can see the edge of the trunk liner...maybe it was rear ended worse than I thought?
The carfax shows it had one 3 owners before this dealer bought it.
I talked the guy down to 9100 for THIS one (he wanted 9850), and he's going to replace the radiator and one HID headlight, and polish the foggy headlight cover.
As for other cars, since I havent bought this one yet, can I expect to find a lower mileage car for this price, or find a similar car for cheaper? Everything I looked at yesterday under 11-12 looked wrecked and BADLY repaired. I talked to a friend of the family who has a dealers license, and his warehouse he told me to look at was the same place with a number of leaking, squeaking, and wrecked lexus cars of all kinds. Are these the majority of cars I can expect to find at auction?