It's better to buy a used car and have it serviced at a local garage that you can trust, or do as much of the work as possible yourself. Then you wouldn't need to get to know the service stealerships at all.
The trouble is that you can't avoid them if your car is under warranty and you need to make a claim.
I used to think this way but my thoughts have recently changed, but my circumstance are a bit different so I'll explain.
I was looking for used stangs, primarily 2012 and newer 5.0's with under 30,000 miles. Because I drive with hand controls I require an automatic, this also restricts me from doing a lot of the work myself on my cars, The automatic thing also eliminates me from Shelby GT500's or Boss 302's as they are all manual trans. Pneumatic shifting may be an option, but that's way more than I want to get into.
The inventory I was finding in my price range was either too high priced for what it is, or had way higher mileage than I wanted.
I had checked out a 2013 GT/CS in beautiful shape that appeared to be a great car, turns out had tick I had the dealer investigate, which I found then needed a complete bottom end in the motor. This is way more common than most people think, especially when on forums like these where I commonly read people pulling off all their parts they've put on their car before they sell it.
I was also looking for a track day car, so it needs big brakes, added cooling, tires, etc... What it would cost me for the cars I was looking at, and then to add these parts, and to have someone do the work, was getting me near the cost of a new Mustang that already had all this on it, and with a 3 year warranty, which none of the used cars I was looking at had as the warranty has expired on almost everything up to 2015.
Yes it cost me more to do this now, but over the next 5-10 years will be a benefit to me.
