I purchased my passport from a private seller and not a thing was wrong with it at the time. it drove great and looked like a good solid car. about a week later I went out in my garage to find a major oil leak. I took it to the local mechanic and after $1200 of repairs there was nothing else wrong with it until about 2 days later when the battery went dead. after having the car told I found out that it had bad terminals and a bad alternator although the battery was fine. I then found out that the break calipers and idler arm and head gasket all had to be replaced to the tune of $1500 more dollars. Besides mechanical problems, the car had a short so every time I stepped on the break the lights would dim. if I had to slam on my breaks all electronics would completely fail. The air/heat also didn't turn off when the car did. so if you didn't remember you would come back to a car that didn't start, the car had terrible road noise terrible acceleration, it got really bad gas mileage- about 13mpg and that was when I was driving conservantly. also the rear drivers door didn't unlock automatically and the windows took 5 minutes to roll up. the 4x4 also didn't work. there were endless things wrong with this car.
The car might have just been a lemon. however this particular car was nothing but a money pit and endless worries for me. however I have a friend that purchased a 1999 passport and has spent not a penny on it in 2 years.
Yeah, we had a 1999 Passport and it was a great car. The only thing with these is that you must check the oil weekly because they use some. Ours did not leak any, but there is no way to fix the oil consumption; it is a quirk. I have a friend who just blew her Passport up because she drove it around with the low oil pressure light on for a couple of weeks and is now having to get a new engine! My advice is to avoid the 4X4 models for the sake of easy maintenance. You will also get better mileage in the 2WD version. I once got 24 MPG in ours, ONCE. I did usually average 20 MPG though.
You purchased an 11 year-old vehicle with 175,000 miles on it.
The vehicle is used-up & worn-out - it can hardly be classified as a "lemon".
The excessive oil consumption is a fact and something of concern, but not to my knowledge inherent to '96 models. This occurred in later years with a different power plant, maybe from '98 on?
As for "worn out" at 175k, it's true and untrue. My early '95 V6 2wd had 150k when purchased and has been great. Yes things will break- however I think he's experienced some truly bizarre anomalies, and did "get a bad one".
I further recommend staying away from 4wd unless you are really in need of it. I have a good friend with a '94 and it's a different beast. It feels like 500lbs of dead weight to steer around, gets much poorer mileage, requires a lot of expensive add'l maintenance and her insurance is notably higher. For me the performance compromise on dry pavement alone would change my mind from love it to hate it if we swapped trucks.
Yes, the buyer purchased a lemon. If you examine his chronology, you will see how fast almost all of the electrical systems and gaskets failed. That sounds like a lemon to me. It sounds perfectly reasonable.
No old car is going to be quite what a new one is, but just being old is no excuse. People don't drive 1984 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cieras because they can't afford a newer car. People drive them because they're so reliable that nothing breaks unexpectedly on them.
Check logical fallacies first before posting.
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