What's your cutoff for mileage on a used car?

I've been looking at a bunch of cars under $3k and some look good or well maintained but I can't pull the trigger when it's 250,000 miles. If I did, it would have to be just enough that I would feel okay walking away from that money as if it had never happened, so like $500 or so.

200k = gotta be a good price. Might pay $2,300 for something exceptional

I think I could pay FMV on something as high as 180k

This is all assuming an average car, so age is commiserate with miles.

What's you all's rule of thumb here?

I paid ~$3500 for my truck when it was 12 years old and had 155k on it.  It is almost 30 years old now and currently has 385k ÷/- 3000 miles.

Mileage doesn't matter as much with modern vehicles as it does with older stuff.

That being said, I've never really been in a position to approve or disapprove something based on mileage alone.

Condition over mileage everytime.

180k is normal and rust free for Arizona but 75k is a rustbucket in Michigan.

Rust and compression check. Toss new plugs in when doing the compression check, no seller will ever complain to walking away from considering their car when they can update their ad to now read new plugs. *Note, I do not recommend this on Triton V8s or Subarus*

I just looked at a 2006 GMC Sierra AWD that was loaded and looked like it was brand new (I even got to go under it and it was completely clean) with 78K on it.  Asking was 19K.  I am really tempted.  It is an identical truck to my 03 GMC sierra denalli (that is now close to 400K and needs work).  The differences I could see were it has factory sun roof and has a 5.3 (versus the 6.0) and does not have the quadro steer.  Everything else was identical or actually better optioned than my 03.  And again absolutely no rust.  It really is a time capsule almost.  It does not have that new car smell but A serious detail inside and out and it would look showroom new.   I actually think it is a good deal in todays market.  

This is thinking it through, not dispensing my wisdom, whatever that is:

I think for me it's about how up to my use/expectation the car appears to be. Is it something I'm going to gut and rebuild from the shell up? Is it something I expect to drive immediately and without more than maintenance? Do I have expectations about how long this solid service will last with maintenance and minor repairs?

There are just so many things that either make me want something with relatively low miles, or reasons that it's a non-issue. Only then do I start twiddling brain cells over the cutoff for a particular vehicle.

Weirdly (it feels weird, anyhow) I've mostly bought new vehicles or vehicles that were just existence donors for some time, with the exception of my truck, which felt "low mileage" for a $5k used truck given that it was just under 80k miles when I got it. I did like that it was substantially sub-100k miles, but I kinda feel like a '97 F-series falls into "before times" notions of durability. I think it could easily make it past 200k, but it will get a lot of attention to get there. (it's now an "errand truck" so it's getting a lot more use than it's covering miles)

On that last point, I mean "before times" as in the division between old vehicles that just seem to be generally knackered much over 100k miles, and newer stuff that seems to be pretty okay at 200k unless they've been abused.

Depends on the price and year. At a certain point if it's 30 years old it'll pretty much always have miles on it. 

And actually, really low miles can be a killer too because you don't know why it was rarely driven.

One of our vans has at least 400k on it and the i6 still runs great.

But no matter what it's the condition over everything

I say condition over everything else, and I'd prefer newer with more miles over older with less miles, to a point. It also depends on the intended use. Is this a daily driver that I plan on putting a ton of miles on? Then lower is better. Is this a fun car or beater truck for truck stuff? Mileage isn't as important to me if I'm only adding 3k a year. Let's say a model of car tends to be trouble free for 180k. If I'm buying one as a commuter, 150k only gets me one year until I hit 180k. Extra car Miata that only gets drive once a week or so? Might take me 10 years to go from 150k to 180k. 

Condition is important, but miles are are ALSO important.  Even if the motor lasts a long time, 250K is a lot of bouncing and jiggling and no matter how good the upholstery and engine are, the chassis is going to be a lot sloppier than a 100K mile car.

According to my most recent purchase... 213k for a 25 year old German car is acceptable.

I must admit I've always had 200k as an upper limit in mind, just as silly things start to get worn out.  I took my AW11 and P10 eGT past 200k, and things were getting sloppy.  That's changed since being here in Peru, due to increased wear and tear here, I consider 200k kms about the same as 200k miles in other countries! That said, there are 2 E36s up at the moment, an immaculate looking 1998 328i Sport with 240k kms, and a '92 325i with 300k kms(!), but lots of new parts, inc B6s, new fuel pump, various other bits.  Actually looks very tidy (in the pictures....)

Ill take service records, and a decent clean car car any day of the week with almost no consideration in mileage.  

I'm old enough to remember my cars rusting through at 5 years old and being junk at 100K, and that still influences my buying. I'm driving a 145K MINI CooperS and a 122K Miata that both work fine, but if I were going to replace either one I'd be looking for (and paying for) low mileage, like under 75K. It's just ingrained in me now.

My acceptable upper limit has definitely crept up over the years. 

I bought a 200k Silverado for $2000 when we were doing renovations.  Put 10,000 miles on it over 3 years before it blew a head gasket, got most of my money back when I scrapped it.

A few years ago I bought my Prius C with 149k for $3000. Currently at 167k and still kicking. 

About to buy a diesel Excursion from a fellow GRM'er that has 250k on it.

When the buy in gets cheap enough that the car is disposable, I stop fretting about mileage as much

In certain cases like some Japanese cars sky is the limit depending on condition. Certain German cars, no mileage is low enough, no matter what the condition.

Dunno if I would go over 200k for anything other than a cheap project.

Depends on what I plan to do with it, and the vehicle. Most of the cars I've bought as daily drivers seem to be from the 50,000 to 150,000 mile range. For a while I had a beater truck which I bought with just under 250,000 miles on the clock.

Bought my XJ at 259(now 312) 4 years ago knowing that it had been well kept and had preventative maintenance done. I was comfortable doing small high mileage work to it myself.

The 100k range worries me sometimes because even a poorly maintained car can often do 100k.

I know there is a lot of hate for the rust buckets dodging craters on the roads, but you must also consider the rust free cars down in Florida being pegged at 80+ MPH on the streets everyday.  The prices on used cars are so insane because Dealers can't get new cars. I miss the good old days of non-running cars for $500, that now go for $3k.

I'm a low-mileage queen, but also depends greatly on the car.

When I'm considering a used car I do way more research than I think the average person does.  I'll look at tons of nationwide ads and compare things.  When I look at 50 ads for an early Disco and half of them have 75k with a bad motor and 7 transmission codes, that's a lot different than 50 ads for W123 diesels with 250k and nothing wrong with them.  I hit up forums for the cars I'm thinking about and look at the most common complaints and look for trends; 4.2L Ford V6s like to develop intake manifold leaks at X miles, Vortec trucks like to have spider injector failures at Y miles, Supercharged 3.8L buicks develop coolant leaks at a plastic fitting at Z miles.

My perception is changing a bit.  Most of my life I've had DDs that were survivor classics.  For a while when I lived in L.A. my newest vehicle was a 1973 Impala wagon with 58k on it.  Newer stuff tends to last longer but the added complexity sometimes means you have a lot more repairs along the way.  A VW 2.0L will run like new with 200k on it... after you've replaced a dozen sensors and 4 proprietary vent tubes, coolant lines, motor mounts, and 3 water pumps.  Contrast that with an old-school BBF that might start burning oil at 125k, but you'll never have to replace a thing.

For now I'm clinging to older tech, or at least not the newest tech.  My van is an 06 because I didn't want DoD, VVT, or any of the fancy stuff.  I wanted an engine that was a chunk of iron mated to a real transmission with a known track record sending power to an axle that has been proven reliable since it was first installed in a vehicle in 1972.

For me, the holy grail is a 50k-mile, pre-1974 lead sled.  I would drive it every day.

Based on that last sentence, I advise you to not listen to a single word I say.

150k for a driver, ~200k for a project.

above 150k you're looking at E36 M3 being worn out that you wouldn't normally think about, like bushings in windshield wiper systems, you know it's gonna need a starter and an alternator in 30k if you don't have proof they've already been done, fuel pumps, seat foam, etc.

having said that, ive been an auto engineer for 30 years and I know what component and vehicle DVP&Rs look like. We test E36 M3 to extreme durability targets in extreme conditions. Any car that has had a reasonable amount of maintenance should run 250k+ these days, although it might need all the ancillaries replaced before that.

I bought a 1999 Toyota Land Cruiser that had 420k miles on it.  It had been dealer serviced at the factory intervals since new at the same dealership it was purchased from.

condition over mileage, as others have said. Based on the cars I've bought, once you get past 150k miles or so, a vehicle will probably need a little bit of everything. So if I'm at 150k or 250k, it really doesn't matter to me because it will probably need bushings, ball joints, bearings, etc either way. Yeah, engine stuff merits more attention at really high mileage, but for an automatic transmission, usually if you're in the 200k mile range it means the transmission has either already been replaced or it has been rebuilt where the upper 100ks it is probably still getting ready to die.

My daily driver/cross country tow vehicle is a GMT400 tahoe that I bought with 200k miles on it. It had a new transmission but otherwise was pretty worn out. It has 280k on it now and is due for an axle rebuild, but otherwise once I replaced everything, it has been great. The lower miles Silverado I bought was still on the original transmission, and it still needed all the same suspension parts replaced, but it was a lot more expensive because the miles were a lot lower.

For a daily driver- 75k is my upper limit. I don't want my daily to be a project and that generally gets me another 3-4 years of trouble-free ownership. Of course these days those cars cost almost as much as new cars. 

For motorsports/hobby cars... depends greatly on the specific car. 

Mark me in the condition over mileage box. 

I'm with most here on condition > mileage. Unfortunately the few older cars I would be interested in, crazy prices. 

But the current market is bonkers in that regard. $35k for a 2016 4Runner with 185k miles? To me that is legitimately who ever buys that needs to be put on a 72 hour hold in an institution.