Do cars get "test drive damage" ?
 

Here's a question: given that we're always told to be gentle on a new car for the first 500-1,000 miles, does that mean we should be worried about the test drives put on a car we buy?

On a test drive it's usually the exact opposite of mild driving, as the goal is to check out the capabilities of a car and basically push it.

This would seem particularly true of an RX-8 where everyone wants to check out its high-revving, extreme handling, max acceleration, max braking, etc

Is it better to order a car and that way put all the miles on yourself?

It seems like a big contradiction, although I've had a dealer in the past tell me test drives were the perfect way to break in a car.

Any thoughts?

the dealerships i went to to test the 8 only had one or 2 that they used for test drives. the ones you bought didnt get test-driven.

What your thinking is true. A lot of the times the car is test driven those are some HARD miles put on the car. Hard acceleration, Hard braking, pushing the car before its warmed up, taking the engine into its upper power band...ect, ect.

There are 2 schools of thought with break-in

1) Drive the car the way your always going to drive it from day 1, no waiting.
2) Drive the car easy, 'strech its legs', give it some time before you start to push it...and even then...slowly work up to it...dont just go from mild to wild....instantly.

I fell that a car should be broken in properly, to give its best performance, both in terms of power and reliability.

The car I bought had exactly 1 mile on it....that came from driving the car off the assembly line, onto a trailer, off the trailer onto the boat, off the boat onto a trailer, off the trailer onto the dealer lot. All those things are gonna happen if you order the car or pick off the dealers lot! You think that 1 mile was the easyest mile of the cars life or the hardest? I am willing to bet the guys moving the cars around dont give it any special treatment.

I would say that a car on the lot with a few dozen miles isnt gonna be a big deal....remeber you have 4 years 48k miles to find out if there is something that is wrong with the car.

When picking off the dealers lot its hard not to find a car without a few miles on it. I was lucky. Mine had 1 mile on it, I took it out for an easy test drive ( i had driven them many time before, both on and off track, so my test drive was more to make sure there wasnt anything off about my car....rattles, stuff like that. I played with everything on that drive : radio, cruise control, windows, sunroof, seats, doors, headlights, brakes, gas, clutch, trany, glovebox, trun, hood...ect ect....everything looked good. when we got back to the dealer the car had 6 miles on it (5 mile test drive) then they said I get a free tank of gas with the purchase....they were gonna drive it, but I said I would...so me and the tech drove down the street, got gas and came back...7 miles on the car when I signed the papers and drove away! I know that for the time I have the car...all but 1 of those miles the car was well taken care of. Even a few miles maby 50 or less I wouldnt worry about to much. Think of how few 50 miles is in the life of a car, people buy used cars all the time with 20k, 30k, 50k miles on them and dont have to many problems (although you could argue the 8 is a little differnt than an average saturn or whatever).

The cars I would NOT buy and watch out for are the 'New' cars (current model year, never sold, never registered) that have 500 miles, even 1k miles in some cases....these are usualy demo cars.....they were used by the dealer to give test drives, taken home by salemen, driven by staff and reporters...ect.... these cars do see a lot of abuse...not just in the motor but the trany and interior as well.

true, but then the dealership has to declare it as a demo, which then you should know (or safely assume) what its been driven like ;)

and also the dealerships themselves probably use the car for errands and lunch runs ... which are probably done very quickly.

It's important to remember -why- we do "breakin". When new, the parts that rub together, while finely machined, are still not a perfect match for each other. They have "bits" (microscopic) that still stick up past the oil film. These must be "machined off" by normal wear. This generates excess heat that the oil film must carry away. If you cause this wear to happen "all at once" you overwhelm the oil film's capability to carry the heat away, and the metal will get too hot. This will change the temper in the metal, as well as burn some of the oil into it. You also want to vary the engine and car speed during breakin to ensure you get all the bits worn off evenly.

So, will a "test drive" cause damage? It depends on how long it is and what the driver is doing. It's unlikely a test driver will hold high speed or high accelleration long enough to do damage - they are "testing" all the aspects of the car and don't have time to hold to one operation long enough. It may be a perfect "breakin" operation.

Then there was the "test drive" when the car first came out in the New York/Boston area. Two test drivers were going so fast on the turnpike they hit another car and launched the test vehicle into the air at a speed estimated to be in excess of 80 MPH. This would probably cause damage. ;)

My car was a test drive mule. Had about 260 miles on it when I bought it (I put on the last 5-10 of those test-driving it the day I bought it). I KNOW this car has been flogged. But, I just passed 23,000 miles the other day, and have yet to experience any problems. I'm starting to believe the camp that says "soft" break-ins are unnecessary... Guess I'll find out for sure in another 60,000 miles. :D

My car had 800 miles on it when I signed on the line. The owner of the dealership had driven it for about a month. Was he easy on it? Hard on it? Who knows. I'm sure he pushed it a few times. Why drive it otherswise? To date, I have had absolutely no problems (well, I'm about to take up the weak battery and squeaky brake issues with my dealer, but no BIG problems) and the car runs fine and seems to use less oil than others mention. I've never really observed a strict break-in on my new cars and I've never had any real engine problems?!

My car had 490 miles. I have not had any problems with it (it is around 5K now). However, the next car I buy will be ordered and I will take it directly from the delivery trailer. No more "blind dates" for me:)

really? as far as i know, here it has to be listed as demo regardless of what the mileage is. i cant say for sure, but im pretty sure. i know my cousin bought a 2004 cavalier that had 100kms on it, it was listed as new. she got into an accident, and then the dealership said it was actually a demo. she got them to upgrade her to a grand am at no cost for 'non-disclosure' at the time she bought it.

maybe they only have to tell you here, i dont know. it has to be disclosed somehow though.

I got my car with 200 miles on it..
it runs fine with no problems
i have about 5k already..lol
i guess mine's fine????

This is something that I'm sorta worried about. My car had 428 on it (now has 2,900) and the Dealer did tell me that it was 'mainly' used by the sales folks. I did comment that it was probably driven pretty hard and my salesman kinda laughed and said 'not this one - because by the time they started using it, the novelty had run out'. This was the last 04 they had (bought in March 05) and I got a really good deal on it. Couldn't really justify spending an additional $5k for an 05!
I'll keep my fingers crossed that there will be no problems (none as of yet). But, I'm sure that if there are any, they will/could over the long haul.

LOL - go down to a port where cars are unloaded. Watch a while. Amazing what happens to those cars in that 1/8th to 1/4 mile drive.

This whole discussion is kind of a parallel to dating. Let's just say that when you are dating you want to be sure that you are "compatible" but you don't want to know if your date has been "compatibility tested" too often. :)

Well let me ask this dumb question: if a car *were* abused during break-in, what would be the symptoms? And when would they show up?

Krankor
05 Shinka 6MT

She would start screaming things like: my last driver had a bigger foot, Oh, you don't use your hands on the wheel right, You just don't have a feel of the shifter to my satisfaction. You know that babe has been around, lol

Mine had 3 miles on it. Hopefully, not 3 miles at 9000 rpm. I decided I wanted to to a gentle break in, or at least one I could control.

Oil changes and break-in periods are two common topics where many people have opinions--but I've never seen a bit of data from a recent study. As for the bits that need to wear off, engines are made to far finer tolerances than they used to be, so this likely doesn't apply the way it once did. I remember a magazine interview with a lead Corvette engineer a decade or so ago--his opinion was that an engine should be driven hard from the time it goes in the car. In other words, no break in.

Of course, there's certainly no harm done through a gentle break in, just as there's no harm done if you decide to change your oil every 1000 miles.

What I'd be more worried about is if a car had been sitting on a lot for months without a test drive. Condensation can accumulate in an engine, and I suppose might start rusting stuff. But then I bought a Protege5 that had accumulated 15 miles during a number of months on the lot, so I must not be too worried about this.

As for the RX-8, long-term magazine tests have often found the the rotary engines are built so tight that they require 30-40k to fully loosen up. Acceleration times are always better at the end of these tests. And this is with magazine journalists driving the car. I'm not thinking 500-1000 miles is going to do much one way or the other.

The break in procedure is in the manual. Certain tolerances are understood when a motor is being built and they create the break in procedure around those. (Race cars - no break in procedure at all -- designed that way and money is no object) a personaly watercraft motor for example, has a pretty extensive break in procedure -- they need to produce them as inexpensively as possible) a car is probably somewhere in between.

I ordered mine from the factory. Whether or not there's any real risk to a test-driven car, there's some satisfaction to having been (practically) the sole driver. As far as break-in I basically followed the instructions in the manual -- the ones the manual says you don't need to follow :rolleyes:

i seen bad shit on cars and gokarts(hondas) on my service center the other day on an automatic gokart the guy was goin on reverse and before the car stopped put it on drive, and this are cars with no owners.