Buyer finds multiple used Toyota Prius with tampered mileage – 316k km real mileage listed at just 93k km!

The recent scarcity of new vehicles, coupled with steadily soaring prices, have led a lot of Malaysians to convert to utilized automobiles as a less costly, a lot more quickly out there different. But the applied market place has its individual pitfalls, as just one purchaser just lately found out.

Melvin, a member of the Prius Club Malaysia Facebook team, made a write-up saying he was hunting to order a facelifted third-technology Toyota Prius and scoured quite a few online classifieds. Going earlier mentioned and past the normal used automobile customer, he requested the sellers for the cars’ plate numbers then cross-referenced them with UMW Toyota Motor to validate the claimed mileage based mostly on their previous support.

The 8 units that Melvin checked were 2012 and 2013 models and all claimed to have mileage below the 120,000 mark, with the lowest being close to 68,000 km. That figure, as it turned out, was make consider – the car was famous to have travelled 197,066 km by the time it underwent its 200,000 km assistance in November.

Two other Prii had their mileage tampered with, the most egregious illustration remaining a 2013 device with a stated mileage of all around 93,000 km that experienced actually logged a whopping 316,056 km. It is not astonishing for a nine-calendar year-previous vehicle to log higher 6-digit mileage but that is additional than 35,000 km a year! That automobile was in all probability nicely taken treatment of, at minimum – it was very last serviced at an authorised Toyota seller in March.

Only one particular car or truck on the listing had mileage that was anyplace near to what was claimed – a 2013 device with all-around 69,000 km shown mileage and a verified 66,831 km when it was previous serviced in 2021. That car, nevertheless, wasn’t the attractive Luxury variant, so Melvin made the decision not to invest in a Prius just after all.

Mileage tampering is not new, of course – it’s popular practice with reconditioned automobile sellers, and in simple fact it’s rare for a Japanese-industry auto to be sold in Malaysia with its genuine mileage. But the point that secondhand motor vehicle sellers are carrying out it as well (and with an official Toyota merchandise at that) is a different indication of unscrupulous functions performing no matter what it will take to get a sale in this new typical.

It is not all doom and gloom, nevertheless. 1 person chimed in to say that he purchased a person of the tampered automobiles – a 2012 device with a claimed 80,000 km on the clock but an true mileage of 171,877 km. He mentioned he was delighted with his buy, obtaining long gone to a hybrid professional workshop and uncovered that the hybrid battery was approximated to still be at 75% health. That’s not negative likely for a 10-calendar year-aged vehicle.

The main takeaway is that you usually will need to be cautious of mileage promises on utilised vehicles and not suppose that tampering only takes place in “recond” cars – even these brought in by way of official channels are vulnerable to this problem. If the stated figure is much too superior to be accurate, it almost certainly is.

And there definitely is no disgrace in buying a substantial-mileage vehicle. Just since a automobile has travelled hundreds of 1000’s of kilometres does not generally suggest it is in a bad ailment, not if it is been maintained appropriately and had its use-and-tear elements changed as required. In actuality, in most instances – primarily if it is not a very-prized collectable – it is far better to acquire a very well-utilised motor vehicle than a person with a low mileage, as the latter implies it has in all probability sat for prolonged intervals of time. That comes with its individual Pandora’s box of problems.

You can also get heart in the reality that Toyota has provided an eight-12 months, unrestricted-mileage warranty for hybrid batteries because 2009. This would’ve lapsed on most (if not all) Prius designs sold here, but it does imply that many owners would’ve taken up a alternative and so have batteries that are 4 several years outdated at most.