[zeep]

My dad is going to need a car after since I'm taking his Tracker and my neighbor has a I want to say 2001 Lexus RX300. It has 100,000 miles on it and she's is willing to sell it to him for around 5k. It seems like a good deal doesn't it? It's in good condition and KBB value is almost 11k. It is a nice car although I'm not particularly a fan of the RX and it's comfortable and nice but here's the catch.

I honestly have never looked at the car up close and apparently she just had the car fixed for around 4 thousand, you know what that means and this has plagued many Toyota models, yup engine sludge. I'm not sure if that's the exact reason (it could be the transmission as I've read a few threads on Clublexus) but if it just had a repair for that much, I don't think it's going to be the greatest deal. On Clublexus there are a few members that have 250k and still on their original engine/trans and others that have had it fail at less than 100k.

My dad will talk to my neighbor and get a mechanic to look at it obviously but still, should he avoid it or not? My instinct is no after I saw edmunds, MSN autos etc all list a MAJOR engine problem under reliability.

So what do you think?