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<p>Buying anything is risky. But I don’t think there’s necessarily great risk in buying a used car. The most troublesome car I’ve ever had was one that I bought new: a 2001 Dodge Grand Caravan so bad that Chrysler bought it back from me 30 months later. (I had that van 2.5 years; I drove it only 28,000 miles. But in that time, I had 16 different warranty-covered repairs–excluding routine maintenance–on 13 different parts of the van. By the time Chrysler took it back, I was on a first-name basis with service advisors in three different dealerships. Basically, I just used it to get back and forth between my house dealerships for repairs.)</p>
<p>I don’t think buying a late-model used car from a dealership is much riskier than buying a new car or a house or anything else that costs a lot of money.</p>