Got a used Pontiac G8; definitely a looker and seemingly had been well cared for. First and foremost, this is not a complaint against the salespeople, they were great and helpful, but against their mechanics. The car performed fine in the test drive, but with just over 140,000, there were bound to be quirks that the mechanics could have easily taken care of before setting it up for sale. One of the first things I was told before the test drive was that all vehicles passed their 30 to 50 point inspection... alright, here we go... At the dealership, I immediately noticed that the front rotors had been machined, but the pads had not been changed and we're just a couple of millimeters thick (they gaged them and decided they were still good... I always put new pads when I cut the rotors), and that the tires needed to be rotated (which they refused to do because "the wear wasn't severe enough"). Had to take care of these issues myself. The same night I arrived home with it, it began idling rough: unsteady and it made the lighting also dimmer. I contacted the dealer (I was given a 5 day or 250 mile time to return the car: "no questions asked" when I bought it), and was told that I had to tow the car that same Friday night to receive my money back "because that was the last day of the 5 day warranty, (1: the car would have still been within the 250 miles, even if I had driven it up there, 2: I bought the car that previous Tuesday, soooo... No, I still had Saturday) if I chose to do that, or drive it up to the dealer to have it repaired "if it is something we can fix," (what?!). So much for their fabulous multi point inspection. The rough idle and dim lighting turned out to be the alternator going bad (which would have been caught at the dealership if they had done the proper voltage testing). Also, on the online pictures one could see that the TPMS needed service, but when I test drove it and up until a few days later, that warning message was gone (good, I thought maybe they at least did that), but is now back. Hopefully they didn't just fix the one or two tires that needed it and left the others as they were (again, something I like to do is to service all 4 together for good measure). They didn't even bother to change one of the fog lamps that was burned out. Thankfully, this vehicle has a good maintenance record, and has held up pretty well because of that: which should have made it that much easier for the mechanics team to take care of the small quirks before selling the car. Maybe this is a good dealer for brand new cars, but, in my personal experience, not used, since the mechanics did not seem to care enough.
Gabriel Villafuerte
Oct 13, 2020