100k miles is ‘deeply unsafe’? You can’t evaluate structural rust in a photo, so if you’re deciding safety based on mileage you have a very unreal sense of safe vs unsafe.
100k miles doesn't make it unsafe, the rust does. 100k miles is mentioned because a 50k mile car is less likely to have potential critical rust, and rental companies are selling cars at 50k miles on average.
Of course now this is the part where you say 50k mile cars can have rust too! They sure can, but where is rust worse, at 50k miles or after an additional 50k miles?
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It's not just rust either, as miles tick up there's plenty of maintenance that's supposed to be done that private renters making a buck won't.
Your rental agency isn't going to pick up a high milage 3 series that's one good highway trip away from shredding its serpentine belt because no one ever fixed a single oil leak it had...
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They're also not going to do what my Turo renter did in Miami:
Give you a car with a brake light and clear metal on metal sounds and tell you "oh, that's ok, the sensor is just broken"
What I've noticed on Turo is now there's a large mix of 'big' players: Unregulated car rental biz that have 10+ beaters of Echos/Sparks/Minis/Focus, or, a buy-here/pay-here used car dealership that's renting out everything on the lot.
[1] https://support.turo.com/hc/en-us/articles/203991940-Vehicle...