Move to Costa Rica, buy used but mint looking 2006 NISSAN 350Z Silver of course. 67,000 miles on it and only driven a bit on weekends, no racing and cruise on smooth asphalt only, 70,000 miles and 9 months after purchase, steering pump leaks and floods a sensor at bottom of block with hot fluid and kills the sensor (don't remember just what the sensor was) so that was TWO items at once gone bad. A few months later I feel the steering go south a bit, take it to the dealer I bought it from and this exactly how much was bad or worn out as we all viewed and checked while up on lift, wheel bearings were worn out, upper ball joints were shot, head gasket was weeping and about to let go, front seal dripping oil pretty good and rear main was weeping bad and ready to let go, rack and pinon was dripping at both end and needed to be rebuilt and other items I seem to not recall at the moment. Little bit too much to come on all at once with only 70,000 mile of adult driving!! Thankfully the car came with a one year warranty on labor so I only paid for parts, dealer lost his a** on all the labor. If I wanted a car that wears out at a young age I could have bought a Chevrolet!!

Two years ago I buy a super clean and non worn 2003 Pathfinder 3.5 that today only has 119,000 K or 75,000 miles. Owned by a little old lady that hated to shift and car has never been off pavement or even put into 4WD. MAS sensor went bad last year and was replaced but did nothing to fix what 3 different diagnostic checks say "bad MAS sensor" so it's still bad. Today my A/C went warm again after replacing the power piston in the compressor a year ago and a recharge two weeks ago, tomorrow my teck will look for the leak. Yesterday I see fluid on the drive and up on the lift this is what we see on this POS today, valve cover gasket dripping oil down the block, seal on the differential weeping and about to let go, both seals on the rack n pinion weeping real bad, the clutch pump dripping like hell and needing a rebuild, no warranty so it's all on me.

So this is the quality of the infamous Nissan auto manufacturer, little bit to much gone bad too young on TWO different autos at the same mileage. Like I said if I wanted two POS I could have bought two chevys and I bet ya the chevys would have lasted a lot longer!!

When you buy an old ride with low miles, expect lots of rotted and hardened rubber. I don't care if it's a Rolls Royce. Crust never sleeps.

UPDATE: To make it even worse, one week after repairing all the fluid leaks on the Pathfinder the ac went flat again, only cost me $250.00 more to replace the condenser core and valve. Total this time around only $800.00 to fix up a 75,000 mile auto that has always been gently driven, I suppose all that "NISSANS ARE TOUGH AND WELL BUILT TO LAST" crap is just that.......CRAP made to continually keep the repair and parts department rolling in dough once the warranty times out. I'm just not impressed with Jap auto manufactures at all!!

I don't see any imogee for "holding your nose", so just picture me doing it and refer to my previous reply.

Yeah, I suppose the best thing to do if looking for long life and high quality is to go get some early 70's Detroit autos. oh wait a second, I almost forgot I DO HAVE SOME EARLY DETROIT MUSCLE....Mint Cond. 76 455 PONTIAC Firebird SilverT/A and a mint cond. 1970 440 Hemi Orange Dodge Challenger. Both of which I restored and can remove and replace EVERY SINGLE part on each of them. (Yes I am a lucky man) I can't even begin to work on these two japs but they do drive and look nice!!

Both your purchases vehicles were older despite relatively low miles
there is no way you can really know their history.

I own 2 Nissan SUVs one of which has the same powertrain as your vehicles, 165,000 and 185,000 miles respectively.
very very Rarely does anything break despite fairly hard use.
recently at 164,000 on the XTerra it needed some 3 sensors replaced. That was the first think on it that needed fixing in 50,000 miles since i bought it (I bought it with 110000 miles on it)
Of course i tell the shop to use Nissan OEM or hitachi sensors only.
Many sensors from parts chain stores are bad out of the box, happend to me with 2 MAFs in a row on a 350Z that replacement parts were bad.

Old thread but good advice from just reading it. Don’t take an old car out of warranty to a dealer. No offense vstar. Once they got that sucker on the rack the sky was the limit. My sons best friend just had a rear left caliper replaced on a 10 yr old ford for $600….at the dealer. Any Indy shop would have done that for half. Had the kids dad had a a socket set and took the time to watch you tube, he could have done it for under $100. While the dealer had the ford in the air they diagnosed struts, and ball joints for $3700. From the sounds of your issues I’m surprised the car ran lol. Ever wonder why a dealership can’t find a thing wrong with a car until it’s out of warranty?

And you can bet that if you paid for parts, you paid for labor. I watched Nissan in Myrtle beach charge a customer $37.50 for an oil plug he could have bough at autozone for $7.

And sadly from my years of dealing with autos, the service writer comes out and tells you 10 things that need fixed, maybe 8 are down the road issues. Meanwhile the issue that the average auto owner actually notices goes unfixed and the 10 hands in that diagnoses could care less.