Shouldn't a CPO car be... nice?

Yeah, learning experience. I guess I can't expect established factory dealerships to really look at their cars.

There is another dealer with a similar year/mileage RX-8 for similar price, just not CPO. But that's not bothering us anymore. We had a good experience there when we went to look at Mustangs. She likes the RX-8 better, but no reason we can't buy from them. (Provided we get an independent pre-purchase inspection and agree on a good price.)

Otherwise, she's more open to private party cars, but most of the private party sellers are not returning my contacts. Whatever.

If it's a Mazda dealer selling the car they can add the CPO, for a price of course. Otherwise get a good PPI and a good aftermarket warranty if you want the warranty protection. CPO is just a "factory" version of the aftermarket warranty anway. CPO is all about the quality of the dealer doing the inspection.

My wife's '07 Volvo XC90 had been in a wreck with the entire front end sheet metal replaced and still made it through Volvo's CPO warranty certification, even though it's not supposed to. It also came home with a broken headlight housing, an $800 part, that took some fighting to get repaired properly, made harder by the fact that I bought out of state because the local dealer sucks.

Don't get me started on the Honda Accord I bought CPO 10 years ago that turned out to be a lemon, complete with forced dealership buyback.

I prefer dealing with private parties to dealers. As far as I can tell spending the extra money for a used car from a dealership doesn't necessarily guarantee any better quality vehicle.

Yes craigslist has a lot of flakes and idiots but if you are patient there are really good deals out there...

Because they know all they sold ya was a (certified) piece of E36 M3. That's all it is, isn't it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it (certified), I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your customer's sake, for your daughter's sake, ya might wanna think about buying a quality product from me.

We have decided to avoid Used Car Lots like the plague and will be judicious as to which new car dealerships we'll buy used from.

Mostly, I'm just hunting Sac and SF Bay craigslist for private-party vehicles with appropriate mileage.

I did manage to talk to the used-car buyer at a local dealership and tell him exactly what we're looking for and target price, so if he might look for an easy sell at auction.