Whether consciously or unconsciously, nearly all used car buyers are looking for a vehicle as close to new as their budget will allow. This preference can be quantitative in years and miles or qualitative in condition. Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) can be a major step toward this like-new designation. However, within the CPO inventory, there may be a couple of cars that come closer to being “new.” These vehicles have never had another owner besides the dealer or manufacturer but have accrued enough miles to be designated as a used vehicle.
What is a Loaner Car?
Three such vehicles fall into this used but never sold category. Demonstrators are cars designated for test drives. Loaners are vehicles offered to service customers when their own vehicle will be with us for a few days. Loaners can be demonstrators when not being loaned. There are also “program cars,” which were used by the manufacturer’s employees until auctioned to a dealer. Demonstrators and loaners are often sold before they reach 10,000 miles; you may find them with as little as 3,000 miles. Program cars may have higher mileage. All are frequently of the current or just past model year. So, they are like-new and low mileage. For simplicity, we will refer to all three as loaner cars, and the question is, should you consider one?
A shopper’s primary concern regarding a loaner car is that it was driven by people who didn’t own it and, thus, did not treat it well. Demonstrators probably have regular bouts of acceleration and even hard braking. Service loaners carried out their driver’s daily routine like other used cars, except that its drivers changed every few days.
The other side of the coin is that these cars have been well-maintained. The resources of our entire dealership are on hand with anything that needs to be done to maintain the loaner vehicle and will be put to use because demonstrators must make a good impression on shoppers. Service loaners are also intended to impress service customers with a manufacturer’s latest features since they will likely be future customers.
The Branded Title
A loaner car may be classified as a fleet vehicle, in which case it may have what is known as a branded title. A branded title indicates anything other than the standard transfer from one private party to another for individual use. It is intended to inform the buyer that the car’s previous use was for something other than private owner use.
Is it For You?
A loaner car can be the closest means of purchasing a new vehicle at a used vehicle price. You have to balance the idea that the car has been driven by multiple people with the fact that its condition was quite important to its owner, the dealer.
One challenge in seeking a loaner car is that they usually aren’t immediately designated as such. You will likely find them as part of our CPO inventory because they are relatively new, have low mileage, and are well-maintained. The Benna CDJR website navigation makes it easy to specify only CPO models. A look at the Carfax history will tell you if it was only previously owned by the dealer or manufacturer. Our sales and service staff can also point you to a loaner car in inventory as they will likely be very familiar with it.
Of course, as a Stellantis CPO vehicle, the car will have undergone a 125-point dealer inspection and have a 7-year/100,000-mile comprehensive warranty from when the car was new, which includes 24-hour roadside assistance, plus a Carfax® vehicle history. And this applies to all 2017 or newer used Stellantis vehicles with less than 75,000 miles.
We invite you to look at our online inventory and visit Benna Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram to see all of our Pre-Owned vehicle choices. If you encounter one of our former loaner cars, you can better evaluate if this could be the right car for you.
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