MS3 - Market Value and Things to Look-out for?

I have been contemplating a new daily driver and something interesting has come up.  A coworker of mine has a 2009 MazdaSpeed 3 up for sale.  She bought it as CPO when it was only a year old and has had it ever since. The interesting thing to me is that is completely unmolested. It has been stock its entire life.  No aftermarket engine tunes. No aftermarket parts. No abuse by 20-something males. Its been in California its whole life so there is no rust on it. She kept all her service records. It has 99,000 miles. It is black (my least favorite car color) and little sun faded in places. 

What do you all think the market value for this is? She is asking $10K.

What should I be budgeting for if I bought it.

Bumping this back to the list.

Market price shouldn't be hard to find. Try going to auto trader, CL and others in your area and see what it would take to by similar aged and similar miles. 

The big plus is the known history so even of you paid "too much" it is still likely well worth it.  

8k to 10k is about the going rate for decent ones. I'd be tempted by that if it had a known service history.

What to watch for:

• Check around the injectors where they go into the block to make sure that the injector seals aren't leaking. It'll be wet and gritty.
• The rear motor mount is a weak spot on these, check the rubber to make sure it's intact.
• They have a tendency to consume oil due to the way the PCV works so if the tips are a black and there's some soot on the back of the car that's normal.
• There's no fuel wash over the valves so the back sides of the intake valves can get pretty crudded up. Generally it just results in a loss of power but a catch, meth, or PFI helps a lot. Mazda will walnut blast the valves in some cases if the service was requested.
• Check the rear wheel wells for rust (I know you said it doesn't but still) the problem should have been fixed in 2008.5 cars but you never know.
• The K04 will smoke a bit at higher mileage. There's a TSB that suggests running 5W40 (Rotella T6 is the weapon of choice in most cars) so don't worry about that too terribly much.
• The K04 is a bit of an unknown quantity. Some people report being ok at 150k miles I broke the journal shaft in mine below 25k (to be fair there was a 3" intake and a downpipe involved).
• The stock bypass valve has a tendency to leak at higher boost levels and as it ages it does need to be greased periodically.
• The stock mapping of the car causes boost to come on suddenly at about 3k RPM. You don't want to enter full boost below that in 5th or 6th gear because it'll blow out the bottom end of the engine even in stock form.
• The CDFP (or HPFP) runs out of steam at 5600 RPM in stock form and can actually cause detonation.
• (Edit) Later cars had an issue with a highly aggressive toe in setting in the front. Factory specs gave a pretty wide range so look at the inside of the front tires for wear. I had mine setup with 1/8" total toe in after lowering it.

What's weak and what to correct:

• The RMM is generally the first thing replaced on the cars. It stops the engine from tearing up the mount and having to listen to the engine hit the firewall. The Damond, CPE Stage 2, and Corksport Stage 2's are considered the best replacements.
• Injector seals leak over time Corksport and CPE both make copper beryllium replacements.
• Oil catch cans help greatly in reducing the soot. JBR makes a really good one and sells a check valve with it (or did).
• There's a couple of solutions, Corksport and Autotech, to replace the HPFP pin insuring a consistent fuel supply.

Under no circumstances should you put performance engine hard parts on the car without an Accessport and tune.  It turns them into a grenade with the pin pulled.

You can get away with the HPFP pin but beyond that it's bad news.

The rest depends on how much further you want to go. They can reliably put down 350HP at the front wheels. 400HP seems to be about their break point before something expensive gives. I absolutely love my second gen MS3, though I think the first gens have the better styling. Parts are a bit spendy for them but they're basically a Focus underneath, the platform is supported by several companies, and the DISI engine is the predecessor to the current Ecoboost platform so you can cross reference parts to get them cheaper if you look.