Looking at an '05 this weekend, need tips

A dealer near me has an '05 LGT sedan, limited, manual, about 110k miles on it, listed at $8995. Atlantic blue pearl, black leather, rear spoiler. Looks to be all stock, body looks ding free, and bumpers look great.

2 owners on the carfax - 1st up until 15k, then second owner until now.

There aren't any accidents or anything bad. One concern I see in the carfax is that it was put into dealer inventory/offered for sale 11/30/2012, but then got auctioned 12/24, and relisted at this new dealer 1/6/2013. Is that normal? The first dealer was a Ford dealership, while this second one is an independent used car lot.

The rear seats have imprints - looks like they're from child safety seats. It's been about two months since the previous owner got rid of the car, so I feel like they would have worked themselves out by now, if they were going to. Of course, that also means it was probably a family man (or woman)'s car, and hopefully wasn't abused.

They have no records of whether or not the timing belt service was performed, but they do offer a 3 month, 3k mile powertrain warranty. If I do buy, I'd be getting it serviced asap, but I figure I can use the timing belt to haggle down (I'll call it a $1000 service for parts and labor).

They also don't have any other maintenance records, besides what's in the carfax.

Thoughts? I'm going to look at it this Saturday. I'll probably offer $7000 and see what happens, maybe go as high as $8000.

I just bought my 2005 legacy GT at 66,000 miles and I would never look back. It is an AMAZING car and hauls serious ass. You'll love it. I think you can talk them down to $7000 though.

If you don't mind me asking, what did you pay, and is it limited/base and auto/manual?

I'm pretty much set on an LGT for my next car, and have been watching classifieds for a couple of months now, and this is the first one close to my area that I'm strongly considering.

The dealers auctioning the car off are not that big of a deal. A Ford dealer that takes the car in on trade may try to sell it, but if they don't sell it in say 45-60 days or have any customer interest in the car at all over a few weeks, they send it to a dealer only auction. This independent dealer probably got a good enough whole sale price on a car they think is good enough to sell quickly and make a decent profit. It's too bad you didn't run into that car just before that Ford dealership auctioned it off. That's where you get the best deals.

Make sure it gets checked out by a trusted mechanic, #1 thing would be a compression and leak down check. This is very important to check, and watch for heavy carbon deposits at the exhaust tips, they could be a sign of some issues. Also, do some heavy reading on here for the issues that can come up....banjo bolt filters that can cause turbo failures, ring land failures, etc... It's a great car, you'll love it!

Sounds like a good used car. I'm an original '06 SpecB owner and still love mine at 115k miles.
Regarding the timing belt, one thing to try is see if there are service records in the Carfax report. Call the shop(s) that worked on the car around the timing belt interval (105k) and ask them if they did a timing belt job. Most will be willing to offer up that information; you're not trying to get the previous owner's information or anything considered private. Finally, if that fails, you might get lucky and find some information about the previous owner in the glove box or console. This has worked for me several times, and the owners I've called were very nice and willing to answer questions about the car. And they have no reason to lie as they've already traded it in.
Good luck and enjoy the car!

Thanks for the replies. The car's about an hour and a half away from me, so I don't know any mechanics near the dealership. It looks like the side street that the dealer's on has a lot of other used car dealers and independent mechanics, so I'll just see which looks like the least sketchy shop.

I figure if I like it, I'll leave a refundable deposit, then arrange for a compression and leakdown test. How does paying for that work? I'm assuming I'd pay, and if I don't like the results, I just have to eat it, get my deposit back, and consider myself lucky I dodged a bunch of headaches?

I live kind of near IAG Performance, so unless I find out for sure that the timing belt was done, I'd probably have them do it, and maybe uppipe/downpipe/stage 2 tune at the same time, inspect turbo and remove banjo filter.

You should not be leaving a refundable deposit to get a pre-purchase inspection done. If a dealer is asking for one, don't. Any reputable dealer will gladly allow you to have the car checked out. Also, any dealer that doesn't allow you, or makes you buy the car with the promise of refunding you if the pre-purchase inspection is not good, run away from them as fast as you can. I sold cars for 3 years while on layoff, and we allowed everyone to take the car to their mechanic. Negotiate a price, and if you feel the deal is good, tell them you want to have the car checked out before signing the paperwork. You will of course have to cover the costs of that inspection, but an hour labor is well worth the cost. Do not hand money to a dealer as a deposit to have the car checked out. Any dealer playing those games is not going to make it easy to get that deposit back. Any dealer not allowing you to have the car checked out, or promising to refund you afterwards is full of it and hiding something.

The deposit would just be to keep anybody else from buying the car. I'll bring up the inspection before I offer the deposit though.

Edit - I had an appointment today for noon, and I got there at about 12:10. I sat in the lobby while waiting for the salesman, and after a few minutes he brought me out back. A family (parents and a son) was just finishing up a test drive, and looking the car over, so I went back inside to wait for them to finish. Once they came in, we started talking and turns out they were going to buy it. I told the dealer to call me if it fell through. I'm not too disappointed since I'd rather have RBP, GRP, or SWP than ABP. I didn't even get to test drive it though.