this is jen. the account is mike's, the opinions in this first post are mine. he will come in with the numbers because he made a spreadsheet and he is very proud of it.
we are six. four kids, 15, 11, 8 and 5. for seven years we ran a 2016 Odyssey that hit 162,000 miles this winter and started eating a transmission fluid line every few months. we needed eight real seats and room behind the last row for the cooler and the soccer bags, which on paper is a Suburban, a Yukon XL or an Expedition Max. new, any of those is 75 to 90 thousand. used and under 40k miles in the Triangle was 52 and up, with a doc fee the size of a car payment.
mike found the Max on mandaautollc.com in march. a 2022 Max Limited, Agate Black, 34,180 miles, bench second row, sitting at a lender yard outside McDonough, Georgia. they do bank repos and you bid blind, one sealed number. i said no. i said no again when he showed me the 70 photos. i said no a third time on the phone with his brother.
here is what got me from no to fine. we called them and a person answered, and when i asked for photos of the third row seat backs and the headliner over the second row (our old van had a water stain there and i wanted to see) they emailed them the same afternoon. and the VIN was in the listing, so we ran our own history report before we bid a penny. one owner, Georgia, no accidents, serviced at a Ford store in Stockbridge on a normal schedule until the payments stopped.
the truck has been in our driveway since late april. i still get a little nervous when i say we bought a car from pictures.
good choice on the bench, with four kids the captains just move the fight to the third row. how is the Max third row for your 15 year old? in our old Expedition EL (2016) the third row was fine for my 6 foot nephew for about an hour and then he started making noises. i know they redid the whole interior for 2018.
GM guy, but i will say something nice about a Ford for once. the 2022 Limited is the 380 hp 3.5 EcoBoost with the 10 speed and it is a good tow setup. two things to watch for at 34k.
first, listen to a cold start in the morning, the first two seconds. the earlier 3.5s had a cam phaser rattle and Ford changed parts along the way. on a 2022 you will most likely hear nothing, but if you hear a short diesel-like clatter, write down the date and get it to a Ford store while the powertrain warranty is still good. second, the 10 speed likes a fluid change sooner than the manual says if you tow, call it 60k instead of 150k.
mike now. numbers, since jen promised you a spreadsheet.
comps in march: a 2022 Max Limited at a Ford store in Cary, 41,200 miles, $52,995 plus a $799 doc fee and they wanted us to finance with them. a Carvana one, 2021 Max Limited, 29k miles, $54,590 plus their shipping. a private sale on marketplace in Durham, 2022 Max XLT, 48k, $47,500 firm and the guy would not let us take it to a shop.
before the Max we lost one. we bid 41,000 on a 2021 Tahoe Premier on the m&a listing in early march and did not get it. you never find out by how much, which is how sealed bids work and which jen still brings up. so on the Max i went to what the truck was worth to us and stopped there. we bid $46,800. we got the email four days after the close.
invoice on M&A Auto Sales: $46,800 and that is it, no buyer's premium line. McDonough to Raleigh is about 420 miles so delivery was inside the free first 1,000. we sent a wire through our credit union on a tuesday ($25 wire fee, the only fee in the whole thing) and a car carrier dropped it on our street 11 days later, on the 28th of april. odometer at delivery 34,212, so 32 miles more than the listing, the extra is them shuffling it around the lot and onto the carrier.
third_row, our 15 year old is 5'10 and he says the third row is "fine," which from him is a rave review. it slides and reclines in the Max, that helps.
i am going to be annoying about the number. i bought my 2021 Expedition XLT at a dealer in Meridian last fall and while i was there they had a 2022 Max Limited with 38k on it for $44,900. it sat for a month. i watched it on their site. so you paid about two thousand more than an Idaho dealer for a truck you could not drive, and you are on the hook for anything the photos did not show.
not saying it is a bad truck. i am saying "under dealer price" depends a lot on which dealer.
jen again. that Idaho truck was 2,500 miles away and also last fall, and every 2022 Max i could find within a day's drive in march was over 50. if we had flown to Boise and driven it home that is plane tickets for one of us plus three days of hotels and gas, and a week of the other one doing four kids alone. you are right that it was not the cheapest Max in america. i will take the two thousand.
and fair point on the photos, so here is the one thing that was wrong. the driver side power running board stopped deploying in the second week of may. the passenger side worked. no warning light, it just stayed tucked in and my 5 year old cannot climb into a Max without it. the photos would never have shown that, it worked when they took them. mike has a story about getting it fixed, i will let him tell it, but i will say the m&a people answered my email about it, just not fast.
those power boards are the same story on every brand that uses them. the motor sits out there behind the front wheel eating salt, road grit and pressure washer spray. before anybody buys a motor: unplug the connector on the dead side and look for green corrosion, clean it, dielectric grease, plug it back in. maybe one in four times that is the whole fix. if not, it is the motor, and the driver side front one goes first because it cycles every single time somebody opens that door.
lurker from Indianapolis, also escaping a minivan (our Odyssey has 118k). the thing i really want to know: what are you getting for fuel economy with six people in that thing around town? our van does about 24 mixed and my wife has made it very clear the gas bill is the dealbreaker.
mike. minivan, the dash says 16.8 around town since we got it, which is school runs, Harris Teeter, practice in Wake Forest. we did Wilmington and back over memorial day weekend with all six and the cooler and saw 21.2 on 40. the Odyssey did 23 to 25, so yes it costs more, about $70 a month more for us at $2.95 a gallon. regular gas, which surprised me.
running board. darnell, i did clean the connector first, because i read your post the night before, and it was not that. motor was dead, i could hear it click and not turn. here is the part i am less proud of. the 6 month warranty from M and A probably covered it. jen emailed them on a monday with photos, and they answered on thursday asking for a shop diagnosis first. by then i had already found an aftermarket motor for $148 and did it myself on saturday with a 10mm and a 13mm socket and a lot of swearing in the driveway, about an hour. so that one is on me for being impatient, not on them for saying no, because they never said no. but if you want a fast answer from them, expect days, not hours.
quick mod note. mike, i edited post 4 to take out the photo of your delivery sheet. it had your street address and the full VIN on it in readable print. the numbers you typed out are still there. everybody else: blur the VIN and your address before you post paperwork, please, there are people who scrape this stuff.
late to this. i have been looking at the m&a auction listings for a 2023 Sequoia, there are a couple sitting in Texas yards. Texas to Reno is past the 1,000 free, about 1,700 road miles from Dallas, so 700 miles at 70 cents is $490 on top of the bid. still cheaper than any Toyota dealer here is asking. jen, would you do it again, or did the running board week change your mind?
jen. would i do it again, yes, with a list. run your own history report on the VIN before you bid. call them and ask for the specific photos you care about, they will take them. bid the number you are fine losing at, because you might lose, we did once. and keep a few hundred dollars set aside for the stuff that breaks on any used car in the first months.
school started yesterday. two drop offs, one carpool for four extra kids on tuesdays, and all eight seats are full for the first time. sequoia, measure the cargo behind the third row in the new Sequoia before you bid on one, the sliding third row eats a lot of it. we looked at one in Durham and could not fit our cooler.
UPDATE, the CarMax offer. mike. jen's brother is selling his car and dragged me to the CarMax in Cary last saturday. while i was there i had them appraise the Max, partly curiosity and partly to know if we had made a mistake. 38,950 miles now, clean, the running board fixed, new wiper blades and that is it.
their written offer was $43,000, good for 7 days. so five months and 4,700 miles in, if we sold it tomorrow we would get back about $3,800 less than the bid, and also eat the NC highway use tax we paid at the DMV (3 percent, $1,404) and the plate. that is the honest version. i do not think that is a bad result for a three row truck that hauled six people to the beach and back, but it is not free and i am not going to pretend it was.
loose ends for anybody doing the same: the Georgia title came by FedEx with the lender's lien release already on it, and the NC DMV office on Garner Road took it with the bill of sale, insurance card and our NC inspection, no calls to anybody. 45 minutes, most of it waiting. darnell, still no cold start rattle, i listen every morning like a weirdo.
if you are looking, m&a auto sales has had a couple more Max and Suburban listings since june, they come and go.
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