Advice to give son buying car for the first time

I dunno I bought my last car from a dealership and it came with a host of issues - one of which being the clutch was not installed properly so it’s very stiff. Don’t fall into the trap where you think that a dealership is automatically better than a private sale. If it’s a used car, you should always get a second opinion on it. No matter where it comes from UNLESS you buy it with a warranty that you actually trust.

When I bought my car, there was a $250 option to return the car within 48 hours. I went to an Infiniti dealership for an inspection (G35 is the car) and they gave me a whole list of things that would need to be fixed. New door speaker, new tires, cost of fixing curb rash, front suspension bushings, and a battery that barely held a charge. These are all things that were wrong with a car bought from a used car dealership with a near-perfect rating on Yelp/Google. So the next day I went back and negotiated a discount on new tires, a free new battery, they gave me a $200 check to fix the speaker, and they gave me dealership prices on fixing the curb rash. All in all, I saved around $800 after seeing a mechanic ($160 for the inspection) because they didn’t want to lose their sale ( I imagine the price paid was above their margin anyways since they bought it at an auction). The $250 option + $160 inspection (which they put towards the first service there) was well worth the savings, both financial and mental.