Hello. I am looking at buying a used 2004 Prius. The owner says that the odometer/speedometer display was replaced and it reset the odometer. currently shows 66,000 Kms but he says it had 25,000 before the display replacement. This sounds really greasy. is it possible for the computer/display to be replaced and the odometer to reset or is this definitely a rollback or had an engine replacement? I will be having it inspected by my mechanic but this has me really paranoid. Any advice you could give will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
So the seller is telling you that the car has 91,000 km on it. There may be other service records that could support this claim. Any dealer service? How many sets of tires has the car used? What condition are the front brake pads in? (probably still original at this mileage on a Prius). The odometer has be known to fail on 2004 Prius with very high mileage, typically taxi service or the like with 200,000+ miles. A mechanic should be able to tell the difference between a car with such high mileage and this one with only 91,000 km.
Several of us had to have that display replaced in the very early '04 vehicles b/c of a problem. They were able to program in our previous mileage, but if they hadn't done that it would, indeed, have started at 'zero'.
A good friend from college had a similar issue with the odometer on his Isuzu Impulse (yes, the one that had a badge stating handling by Lotus). When the odometer was replaced the service station had to supply some sort of certification about the old mileage. When he went to sell the car he had tons of hoops to jump through. I would imagine that in your case the seller has to have some sort of documentation. As long as that checks out I do not think that I would worry too much - I'd also get a carfax (or the Canadian equivalent) as that should show mileage levels over time. He did not have to tell you - if he was looking at pulling a fast one on you he would have simply sold it as relatively low mileage used car with 60k on the odometer.
