We will drive some cars that are not designated demos and sometimes we don't even have any demos as the IS sells out again and again. It is still just hard to get IS350's/IS250's in certain colors especially with Navigation. In our state demos are cars with over 400 miles on the ODO. The dealer will warranty your grill work so just go for a long drive and erase those old miles with new ones and enjoy your IS350. Life is good....

Rock

 

A demo is a car that a store employee is authoried to drive. I demo is licensed and titled to the the dealer. Typically dealers allow up to 5000 miles on demos before they are sold as a demo/used car. You simply have a new car that has 140 test drive miles. If it was never licensed it is not a used car. The dealer did nothing wrong in selling this car as new. I just bought a new 2006 Toyota Tacoma that had almost 400 miles on the clock. It was a dealer trade from another dealer across the state. I looked over the truck with a fine tooth comb before signing the paper work.

If you found damage that you did not see then the dealer should take care of that. You may have a difficult time convincing the dealer that you did not do the damage after leaving the lot. Beyond on the dealer owe's you nothing. Shame on you for not looking the car over closer.

 

it's common for dealerships to put their decals or license frames on the cars, as a means of free advertisement--does not in any way mean the car had been used as a demo. A demo is a car a manager/salesman regularly drives home, and one that's regularly used for test drives--it gets sold after thousands of miles, and is billed as a demo. In addition, he admitted to you the car had been test driven, you FREELY signed the paper and took delivery, with the milege on the paper. As far as the grill is concerned, I think you are simply looking too closely at this car (have you checked uner the bumper?). Everyone wants their new baby to be PERFECT, but if you look long enouth, you will ALWAYS find a defect (it's just a manufactured product, after all). Feel free to complain to the dealership, though. Pardon the comparison, but you are like the man who married a girl and found out on his wedding night that he was not her first man (even though she had mentioned that she'd "gone out" with other men a few times; in addition, he found a mole on her buttock). The world will not end, and life goes on.

 

Technically speaking, your car is a NEW car because it's never been titled. Also, 140 miles on the ODO isn't much IF the car was a demo. I gather that you had to acknowledge, by signing a document, that the car had 140 miles on the ODO before you bought it. Correct? Given that amount of mileage I seriously doubt that your car was used as a demo. Assuming that you got the deal you wanted to get, be happy with the car. In my opinion you should get the grill replaced and then enjoy many miles of safe driving.

 

I think I done heard it all now!~

 

Buyer's blues are quite common. We spend a lot of money on cars so it's not uncommon, particularly in the first week or so after we sign the check or sign the financing papers, to have that deep down feeling that we made a mistake. So be it. One way that this is manifested is that we read on this forum about special "deals" that other buyers got and we feel like we got screwed because we did not get free mats or one extra free service intervals.

Get your grill fixed and enjoy the ride. Interesting that we probably ALL had a test drive in an IS before we purchased ours. Do we want every car that is driving by another person, regardless of how little, to be discounted by $5,000? If so, list price would have to be about $45,000 - $50,000.

 

It was probably driven from one dealer to another and a couple of test drives. Have them fix what you see is wrong and be happy.

 

I feel dealerships are doing a disservice to their customers by allowing people to test drive new cars on the lot. Considering the amount of markup in these vehicles, it isn't unreasonable to ask the dealer to put aside a sample of each model to be designated as a "demo" and be the only one available for test drives. When eventually sold, they should be sold as demo vehicles, with the discount determined by market forces.

 

I think most dealers do that. At least at the two dealers around me. They keep a couple of IS's on the front lot, and rest in the back.

 

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I think we need to know exactly what the term "demo" means. If "demo" means that the car is titled to the dealer, then it can't be sold as a new car because technically, even if the car has 10 miles on it when you buy it, you would be the second owner. If, on the other hand, "demo" simply means that the car has been informally flagged by the dealership as the car that all customers who are interested in that particular model should test drive, then I find it hard to believe that this car is a demo. After all, if this car truly were a demo, why would the dealer sell it after only 140 miles? I suppose the dealer might designate a car as a demo up to, say, 150 miles, and then designate a different car as a demo, but I would think that a lot of confusion would result from that.

I'm in the same camp as a lot of others here. 140 miles is just not that many miles. Would if have been nice to have one with 10 miles? Sure, but that's not what you got. I assume you wanted this particular car because of the color, options, etc. You could have had another one with fewer miles, but you would have been giving up some of the things you wanted. Just enjoy the car. In a few thousand miles, you won't even remember this. I would ask them to replace the grill, though. Just my .02.

 

It varies. The Lexus, Infiniti and Acura dealers had demo cars, but Audi put me in an A6 with under 40 miles, and at BMW I drove a 330i that had 20 something miles, an empty tank and protective plastic still on the rear seats -- clearly NOT a designated tester.

 

It isn't the number of miles, it's how those miles were put on. The owners manual clearly states "no sudden acceleration, no hard braking, etc." in the first few hundred miles. Do you think people test driving the car followed those guidelines?

If I was to walk up to you at a gas station and say, "wow, nice new car, can I take it for a spin?", you would tell me to pound sand, and rightfully so. How is it any different when a dealer allows your new car to be thrashed before delivery?

 

140 miles isn't that much. Its two days of normal driving for me. Didn't you know the car had an odometer. When I test drove an IS250 AWD, it was the one set aside by the dealership for test drives (had about 40 miles on it). They would've sold it to me had I wanted that one and then a different car would have been the test car. You probably have a test car, not a demo car. Get the grill fixed if its bad, and you can probably request the dealer to remove their decal on the back. Other than that, don't cry about buying the car with the miles.

 

my mom's lexus had 151 miles when she bought it...they just said it was testdrove a lot...maybe it was a demo too

they said they would just add 151 miles to the warranty, so we have a warranty for 50,151 miles

 

Good points, but aren't the owners' manual guidelines just that, guidelines. I'm not saying that I would do any of those things to my new car, but, that being said, unless the car is driven for several hours straight at the red line, do you really think that any hard driving up front for the first few miles will have significant effects years/miles down the road? I'm really asking, because I don't know the answer, but I always thought that these cars are built to be bullet-proof, and that a few hard stomps on the accelerator early-on shouldn't be a problem.