variant wrote:timing belt... and oil
When you driv eit try and get a feel fr the suspension, if it's super rocky you should replace the struts too. I'd say the timing belt is more important than that by far though. Also see if they replaced the water pump when the timing belt was done. Make sure you don't just have a guy telling you this, make sure they can prove it. Apparantly a lot of peoples CD players have broken in their Solaras. I've had two and they've been fine, but you may just want to check all the accessories and stuff like that. It would be a bummer to get the car and then discover the passenger side mirror controls are broken or something small like that. It's probably still on the originial clutch, whcih I'm sure you can find out for yourself just by driving. The clutch should be good to almost 150k even if it's driven right.
All that being said, I paid $8,100 for a 99 V6 5spd with 76k on the ODO, so I think their price is a litte high. Also mine has leather, I know that isn't standard on the SE, it has the 16" premium SLE wheels as well and a fe wother options like full sized spare etc. If the one you're looking at doesn't have that stuff, I wouldn't even consider paying more than 7.5k. Honestly the car is a very valuable car, and in the long run, better than many other cars you could get for 8.8k, but there are many places you can find one for less. I see SLE V6s with similar or less miles going for less money than that, and they come with full options such as homelink and autodim mirror, auto climate control and more. The only downside to them is they're only auto transmission. So if they're nto going to budge, I say shop around some more.
I did a kelly blue book on it for private party value as if you were buying it from a friend how much it should be worth, and even putting the leather option, premium wheels option, 4 wheel ABS, power seat, power sunroof and spoiler on the car, in good condition still only came up to be worth $6,760.
http://www.kbb.com/kb/ki.dll/kw.kc.ucp? ... pe&7;TO;S1
Go the the site yourself and put in every detail about the car to see what it comes up with, and bring that to the dealer with you to use as leverage.
After that it ust comes down to how much you want the car. When I bought mine private party like I said I paid 8.1k when the bluebook only came up to 7.2k, but I really wanted the car so I was willing to pay the extra $.
Good luck with everything, let us know how it goes.
-chris