I worked with a salesman for 8 months to find my specific Santa Fe back in 2014/2015. The color combo I wanted was less popular. He called me one day to say he found one but wouldn't tell me where it was. He kept insisting I schedule with him to see it. He set the lowest price possible and wouldn't budge...and still wouldn't tell me where it was located. I took that as a clue.
Not to burst your bubble dude, but what the first salesman did is perfectly legitimate. He didn't tell you where the car was because he knew you would do exactly what you did if you knew where it was. A dealer that has to buy a car off another dealer to sell to you is always going to be more expensive than the dealer that has the car for sale. I'm actually surprised you don't realize this, but
you are actually the jerk in this story. He worked with you for 8 months and he actually found you what you wanted and wanted to get paid for that work. In the end, you wasted his time. Is his time worth as much as he wanted to charge you? No. But it's your job to negotiate on that inflated number. Good for your wallet that you were able to go around the back of the guy that actually found the car you wanted, but don't act like you are pure as the driven snow in this story. You are clearly not.
Let's be honest, very few consumers are going to have a "Moral Reckoning" on telling Carvana or CarMax the vehicle burns oil.
You keep missing the point. You don't avoid the moral dilemma of offloading an oil-burning car onto an unsuspecting owner by selling the car to carmax vs.putting it on auto trader yourself. That car is still going to be sold to an unsuspecting person by carmax. The problem with our cars, and you pointed this out, is that the defect is essentially invisible. A pre purchase inspection won't show it. Without literally going onto this forum and reading through these threads or asking about the car, there is no way for the general car buying public to know about this problem.
With all that said, to be fair - you are absolutely right that it is not the moral responsibility of an owner of a car in need of repair to keep that car forever just because it may be "wrong" to sell it to someone. I think after a car is 7-8 years old and has 100k miles on it, whoever is buying it should be willing to accept the fact they might be buying a car that might have a catastrophic failure at any time. Part of my moral conundrum when I had to decide if I wanted to unload my oil burner was that it was only 3 years old. And I don't think anyone
should expect a 3 year old car to have failing engine internals that would require a $5,000+ repair.
In the end, we agree. The moral culpability here lies with Volvo. They engineered, manufactured, and sold a product with such a high defect rate that they literally redesigned it only 2 years later. I don't think they knew what they were doing at the time. But I think, because of the specific failure involved, it should be their duty to repair these engines for all the people in the used market that are getting screwed now and for the next few years. I don't like most people in the civil litigation field and I think class action attorneys are some of the worst actors in it. But this is one of those rare cases where I think their services are needed. Until that happens, I'm going to be really sad every time a new one of these threads is posted.
