Warning - 2009 370 at Morningside Nissan

Dizzy

I'm currently in the market for a 370Z and after visiting the forum, I read and was tipped to a White 2009 sitting at Morningside Nissan in Scarborough.

After reading the about it, I contacted Morningside Nissan to see if they still had the White 2009 370Z. They did, and they were ripe to make a great deal. So, off I went buy it. I was extremely excited and thought I had found the deal of a lifetime. But at $38K for a sport, I told my wife, "this is too good to be true".

I had every intention of coming home with that car. Took it our for a drive - everything was fine. Had a quick look around the car, seemed OK. Made the offer. While we were watining, my wife and I went back out and took a longer better look at our new baby. That's when my wife noticed it.

The lower skirt on one side seemed slightly off, the colour didn't seem to match. At first I thought it was the light, but on closer inspection, it appeared different. The sales guy comes back out and I ask about it. He says "oh well, it's a white car, not every panel is going to match perfectly. Plus, the lower part has a protective coating that will slightly discolour it". Now my spidey senses are tingling. So I go back and forth, right side to left side and finally pick up on a slight difference. If you look in the left and right rear wheel wells of the car, you will see where the lower panels attached to the car are painted differently. One side is black inside the wheel well, one side is white. The car has been repainted, which, he finally admitted to. It's the lower passanger side skirt that has been repainted. His reason, it got a big scratch when it was being unloaded. Not sure they would repaint the entire side of the car for that, that would be a buff and spot paint. So now I'm looking harder and my wife notices on the other side, if you stand at just the right angle and let the light reflect on the car, you will see a warp in the lower panel on the drivers side.

All I could guess after all was said and done that the car has obviously been through some form of "incident". It appeared to me that the car had either mounted a curb which caused the warp in the driver bottom and probably the replacement of the passanger side skirt. Or perhaps it was dropped during an offload somewhere. Who knows, they certainly weren't coming clean about it.

More troubling to me, at first, they tried to hide it and make up bull excuses. Even after I had proven a repaint, then their excuse was it was to cover up a scratch. By the end of it all, the salesman was saying and I quote, "it is what it is, you want it?".

The really funny thing, he brought the body shop manager out who admitted to the repaint but was adament it was the drivers side. It was obvious it was the passanger side as the inside of the wheel wells are painted white, the drivers side are black (no paint). I asked him if when they repainted the drivers side the scraped the paint off the interior of the wells too. He didn't have an answer.

Morningside Nissan = less than honest. There is a reason that 2009 is still there, even at the $38,000 price point. They should be asshamed of themselves trying to sell a repainted car as new without disclosing it.

Just a warning for others as I came whisker close to buying it. The search continues, for 2010 now.

If anyone knows of a White 2010, 6spd, with sport and Nav, I'm looking!