I began looking for a used Tesla back in August of last year. I have a friend with two model S, and riding in his helped me decide what I was looking for. I was looking to pay $45k or less, and therefore expecting that I would likely end up with a 2014 or older.
Unfortunately, my requirements were pretty specific. I wanted either brown metallic or red, a textile interior (don't like the feel of leather), sunroof, tech package (if a car made when the tech package still existed), and preferably subzero package. The textile interior seems to have only been on about 5% of the cars, estimating based on EV-CPO archived listings. The subzero package was on maybe 20%. To give you a sense of how much those two requirements narrow the playing field, EV-CPO shows 7,847 cars in the archived listings. Of those, only 47 had textile seats and subzero package. Two of them are brown (one with no sunroof), and both well out of my price range. 12 of them are red.
So, by being very picky, my search dragged on for quite a while.
About 5 weeks ago roughly, a 2015 70D popped up on EV-CPO that fit my exact requirements - red, textile, subzero, sunroof. At $50,700, it was a bit above the price range that my wife had agreed to. But, with only 38k miles, it came with a 4 year/50k mile warranty, all wheel drive, and was a year newer than the best I had been hoping for (actually based on the VIN it's from the end of 2015).
Before I could get wife-approval, it was gone.
A few days later, in a thread about CPOs, a list member posted that he had just put down a deposit on this exact car. He seemed perhaps not sure that it was what he was looking for, so I sent him a message saying that if he decided to not buy it, to please let me know. After 10 days or so, I hadn't heard anything, so I figured he was probably enjoying his new Tesla.
But then I got a message from him saying he had turned it down due to cosmetic defects. I quickly got some pictures from the OA (conveniently, I live in the neighboring state as the original buyer, so the car had already been delivered to the nearest service center, and I was already communicating with the OA in the region), and decided that the cosmetic defects weren't enough to keep me from buying it, so I put down a deposit before it went back up online.
It has some scraping on the rear bumper, but after some thorough polishing, it's only noticeable when you are up close. I may have the bumper resprayed at some point, but for now it's not significant enough for me to bother. I'll post pictures of the car later.
The actual process of getting my car went surprisingly quick. It took about a week from the time I put my deposit down until it was delivered to my driveway. Most of that intervening time was spent with me securing a loan, going down to visit/inspect the car, etc..
I still need to get a list of what (if any) items were fixed or replaced during the mechanical refurb process. Overall the car seems to have been well care for, with the exception of the scrapes on the rear bumper.
Now I get to return my leased Nissan Leaf, and I've been enjoying tooling around in my shiny new Tesla the last few days.
Since they couldn't get the title to me in time for me to register it before the memorial day weekend, the OA gave me temporary paper license plates from Virginia that I could use in the meantime. Massachusetts (where the car was) doesn't do temporary plates, which makes things a hassle. But they worked around it nicely.
Unfortunately, my requirements were pretty specific. I wanted either brown metallic or red, a textile interior (don't like the feel of leather), sunroof, tech package (if a car made when the tech package still existed), and preferably subzero package. The textile interior seems to have only been on about 5% of the cars, estimating based on EV-CPO archived listings. The subzero package was on maybe 20%. To give you a sense of how much those two requirements narrow the playing field, EV-CPO shows 7,847 cars in the archived listings. Of those, only 47 had textile seats and subzero package. Two of them are brown (one with no sunroof), and both well out of my price range. 12 of them are red.
So, by being very picky, my search dragged on for quite a while.
About 5 weeks ago roughly, a 2015 70D popped up on EV-CPO that fit my exact requirements - red, textile, subzero, sunroof. At $50,700, it was a bit above the price range that my wife had agreed to. But, with only 38k miles, it came with a 4 year/50k mile warranty, all wheel drive, and was a year newer than the best I had been hoping for (actually based on the VIN it's from the end of 2015).
Before I could get wife-approval, it was gone.
A few days later, in a thread about CPOs, a list member posted that he had just put down a deposit on this exact car. He seemed perhaps not sure that it was what he was looking for, so I sent him a message saying that if he decided to not buy it, to please let me know. After 10 days or so, I hadn't heard anything, so I figured he was probably enjoying his new Tesla.
But then I got a message from him saying he had turned it down due to cosmetic defects. I quickly got some pictures from the OA (conveniently, I live in the neighboring state as the original buyer, so the car had already been delivered to the nearest service center, and I was already communicating with the OA in the region), and decided that the cosmetic defects weren't enough to keep me from buying it, so I put down a deposit before it went back up online.
It has some scraping on the rear bumper, but after some thorough polishing, it's only noticeable when you are up close. I may have the bumper resprayed at some point, but for now it's not significant enough for me to bother. I'll post pictures of the car later.
The actual process of getting my car went surprisingly quick. It took about a week from the time I put my deposit down until it was delivered to my driveway. Most of that intervening time was spent with me securing a loan, going down to visit/inspect the car, etc..
I still need to get a list of what (if any) items were fixed or replaced during the mechanical refurb process. Overall the car seems to have been well care for, with the exception of the scrapes on the rear bumper.
Now I get to return my leased Nissan Leaf, and I've been enjoying tooling around in my shiny new Tesla the last few days.
Since they couldn't get the title to me in time for me to register it before the memorial day weekend, the OA gave me temporary paper license plates from Virginia that I could use in the meantime. Massachusetts (where the car was) doesn't do temporary plates, which makes things a hassle. But they worked around it nicely.
