Well, it was well within my beater radius, only 20 minutes away, so I went for a look & test drive.
Inside, it's remarkably clean. Seriously hard to believe it's 15 years old. Heck - it'd be hard to believe it's
one year old. It's mechanically sound, well maintained (5k km oil change receipts, recent pads/rotors) & drives nicely. Owned by a retired landscape machinery mechanic who looks after his things.
Cosmetically it's not great - it does not present a good "face": previously resprayed front bumper is peeling; an ugly rust hole on the leading edge of the hood (and bad attempt to spray over it).
The potential deal-breaker is the rocker panel situation. The passenger side is OK. But the driver's side will need work. It's not as bad as my Echo hatch:
But it's got lots of rust bubbles on the outside, and if you started poking at it, it'd soon be a fairly big hole:
Most of the bubbles are on the bottom, not shown. And on the inboard side of the pinch weld, there is already a small hole right through. I'm not even sure it'll pass inspection. They're going to ask their mechanic about it tomorrow.
I low-balled them and they said no, countering at only $100 below the asking price. He said "let's think about this and talk tomorrow." Sounds good to me.
Oh, and the AC doesn't work. Not an issue to me, but it'll make it a bit harder to sell.
I only paid $1k for that blue Echo hatch, and had $1800 in it by the time it was repaired and I ended up selling.
If I was looking for an Echo to keep, I'd absolutely buy this one at their asking price. It's a good car. But because I'm hoping to flip it next year and at least break even or make a few pennies, I need more wiggle room.