Dzień dobry people!
**TL;DR:** Buying a car first time, got 50,000 PLN budget, have no idea about how to find a decent car, got questions.
I don’t know much about cars and this will be my first car. After reading most (if not all) of the posts here about buying cars, I am even more confused about how to pick a decent car here or what things I should be looking at. So far I was checking cars on [otomoto.pl](https://otomoto.pl) combined with [historiapojazdu.gov.pl/](https://historiapojazdu.gov.pl/).
My budget is around 50,000 PLN and I am mostly looking into hatchbacks but there’s not a certain make & model I have in mind yet. I mostly checked Golf, Focus, Citroen C4, Peugeot 308, BMW 1 Series.
As long as finding a car online goes, it’s fine, but I have to actually go and check the cars that I like physically. My Polish is not that good to have a conversation and considering I don’t know much about cars, going and checking a car would be basically about the visuals mostly which doesn’t make much sense.
Of course I am thinking about taking the car to a service station for inspection. One place I found is [https://motocontroler.com](https://motocontroler.com). Let me know if you have more but I have a few questions and I’d appreciate if you could help.
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1. Which make & model would you suggest in terms of popularity, demand, ease (economically) of repair?
2. Do I need to change the license plates if the car was registered in another place?
3. When checking records on [historiapojazdu.gov.pl](https://historiapojazdu.gov.pl) I see that some cars have “co-owners”, how does that work in terms of buying the car from its owner? Does the co-owner have to be present when we’re making the agreement and payment or be involved in the process somehow?
4. Should I be looking into buying a car from dealers or should I only consider buying from people? Wasn’t sure how to phrase that but you got my point.
5. Lastly, why is the mileage of cars quite high here? I see that 2019 model car can be well over 150K km. I don’t know whether it’s due to their job (company car etc.) or they just like traveling a lot but I couldn’t really make sense of that so I wanted to ask.
Cheers!
9 comments
buy a fso polonez caro with 1.4 or 1.8 16v rover engine. you will thank me later. save the rest of the money for a small tuning, repairs and petrol
1. It’s worth avoiding some cars due to their engines. Some engines work fine, some will likely require immediate work, but will later run for years (Fiat Multiair) and some are just made of problems and failure points and should be avoided (early Citroen/Peugeot 150-ish horsepower 1.6 turbo)
Check, what is interesting for you (out of things common on otomoto or olx) and then check the opinions on the engines. You have a decent chance, that the cars in question will be old enough to have their problems known in the internet.
2. Yes, no and depends. You still need to re-register your car after purchase, amd you always need to takw the old license plates there with you. If after inspection, they are deemed good enough, you have a choice of getting new ones or keeping the old ones.
Generally you usually want plates from around, where you live (i.e. some sort of Masovian plates in Warsaw) and you want to avoid bad plates (like drivers from Zgierz having a bad reputation around Łódż). It’s not necessary, but reduces the amount of problems with stupid people, you will face on the road.
4. If you want to buy from a dealer, go for the ‘premium’ ones like AAA Auto. The regular ones have a bad name in Poland and there are good reasons fot it.
5. It is entirely possible to make 50k kilometers per year in Poland, aspecially, if it was a company car. Generally this means a kot of highway driving, so it’s not as bad as it looks. It’s better to check the actual condition of the car.
Additional advice:
NEVER, under any circumstances check the car alone. Get a friend (aspecially a friend who speaks Polish and/or knows a bit about cars), aspeciakky if he/she is critical of you buying a car. Tell them, you need a devil’s advocate andbuy them a beer later.
NEVER check a car after dark. You want to see it in sunlight. There are cars in Poland, that were wrecked and they might be repaired properly or not.
You can always drive to one of the nearby diagnostic stations (Stacja Kontroli Pojazdów) and ask them to check the car. It will cost you some 200-300 PLN, so only do it, if you think, you want this car. Also if the owner refuses the idea or your choice of diagnostic station, you should not buy the car. It’s most likely a trap.
Check Historiapojazdu and things like AutoDNA. Look for accident repairs and check the cost. Expansive – avoid the car. Cheap – most likely scratches or minor bumps, which should not be disqualifying.
Also, cheer up. With 50k PLN, you are not buying a 20 year old car, so you are not playing on legendary fificukty.
If you are on b2b, choose leasing
I suggest you to find an advisor for cars. Usually they are ready to provide with some recommendations in your budget, looking a few variants and check them with or instead of you. It will cost around 1-2k zl
I think buying cars from “local” dealer (so no too far away from you) who “imports” cars from western europe. Why? Because for most is not worth to import “too damaged” cars.
I.E. I bought 10 years old fiat that had only 150k km. I don’t know if this is only this dealer, but in my family 4(?) people bought cars from him and all of them are working very well
Buy local. I mean buy a car sold initially by a polish dealer and registered in Poland. This will save You a lot of headache.
You can try with AAAuto, I have two cars from them, can’t complain. Their full offer is enlisted on their website. Please be resistive to any extra insurance offered by them 😉
There are exceptions to what I’m about to write but:
1. Don’t buy from a dealer. Use filters, ideally to search for cars bought in Poland by private owners (ideally first owners).
2. Hatchbacks you mentioned are best with diesel engines. I owned Golf, Focus and Peugeot 308. Golf and TDI or Peugeot with HDI engines are unstoppable and extremely durable. Focus has decent gas engines too. They all are fine even for the city.
3. If you stick to point 1 and find a car, try to look whether there are any workshops/mechanics offering “pre-sale check”, by the means of professional look through the car’s condition. I paid for mine like 400 PLN and after 2 hours got a detailed report with things that do or might require repair, which gave me better understanding of car’s real condition (don’t trust the word of the owner) and good starting point for negotiations.
4. For used cars, consider approx 4000-5000 PLN as the starting budget to fix/replace worn parts, so you won’t get caught off guard after buying a car.
5. If you stick with solid engines, don’t be afraid of cars with 200 000 – 300 000 km behind them, but only if cars aren’t like 2 or 3 years old. Young units with such mileage are usually from corporate fleets and are treated like shit.
6. Cars you listed are popular and have a lot of solid documentation about their biggest flaws, engines, etc. Check, educate yourself and know what you’re looking for.
Buying an used car in Poland is a nightmare. Most of sellers hides defects and truth about the car history. Making the distance meter corrections are extremely common in here, and many cars which came from Germany has this already made.
Check some examples on https://bez-wypadkowe.net board or their fanpage https://www.facebook.com/bezwypadkowe.net/
330kkm to 180kkm? No problem for polish tradesmen!
Top three the least respected jobs in Poland are politician, taxi driver and used car seller
buying car is a usually bad investment, but if u can’t stop urself then why not a skoda – they’re a reliable brand like toyota?