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The 172 ad you posted the link to has a new engine, a bunch of mods and upgrades and an overly optimistic owner.

1964 CESSNA 172E SKYHAWK
$35,000 USD

Total Time:4900 Engine 1 Time:1159 SMOH Prop 1 Time:1140 SOH Condition:Used Year Painted:2000 Interior Year:2017 Flight Rules:VFR # of Seats:4

Its a nice looking plane with serviceable avionics and lot of time left on the Continental engine. If you wanted you could upgrade a radio or two.

I am one of the few men in history whose wife insisted that we buy a general aviation airplane. When I returned from a flight in my homebult ultralight after a couple hours flying in the Olympic Mountains, my wife said, “We need an airplane that I can go flying in too.”

We spent two years plane shopping before deciding on our Cherokee. We started out looking at tail dragger classics like Aeroncas, etc... because that is what most of our friends at the time had. Ironically the first non-classic general aviation plane we got excited about was a 1964 Cessna 172. For some reason my wife named it Elvis. Our mechanic friend did a prebuy on it and recommended that we take a pass. After that we traveled thousands of mile looking mostly at Cessnas. There was a period of time when we concentrated on Comanches as well because our good friend who was a pilot for American Airlines had a Commanche 260B and we loved that airplane.

Right after we went for a test flight in the Cherokee that we purchased almost 30 years ago and after two years of looking at planes my wife told me to buy it... basically or else. I was skeptical because the last Cherokee we had been in didn't seem to perform very well. But this one managed to get the previous owner, his wife and the two of us into the air with no issues.

It had just been painted and looked spectacular. My cousin was an upholsterer and the guy we bought it from worked for Alaska Airlines and he helped us get enough first class Alaska Airlines leather to redo the entire cabin.

I was getting sick of looking at planes also. One of my best friends was an aircraft mechanic and he used to come with us when we would look at planes. I didn't even call him to look at this one, but I did give it a serious looking over myself and watched the fresh annual being done as well. We have never regretted buying the plane and it has served as better than we could ever have expected.

The plane has never missed a beat during critical times while flying in conditions that were challenging. When you come back in the middle of the night after flying a thousand miles through heavy weather and you have low visibility and the wind is blowing so hard over the trees next to the runway that you have to do a go-around because you have been bounced around so severely... that is when you really appreciate an easy to fly airplane with gear that is 10 feet apart that you can plop on the ground in a hurry by pulling in whatever amount of flaps you need instantaneously. This is a plane that became almost an extension of my body

I remember one time we were so certain that we were going to be purchasing a 172 that we bought one way commercial airline tickets to Sacremento so we could fly it back to the Seattle area. The plane was based there. My sister-in-law who lived in Palo Alto met us at the airport and took us over to where the plane was at.

We got to it before the owner arrived. I could tell from a distance that we had been lied to. He told me that it was being flown regularly and was ready for the 700 mile trip back to our home. I could see from a distance that all three tires were flat. When I got close I could see that they were all weather checked and split and not safe for use. There was someone doing a preflight on an airplane tied down nearby. I asked him if he had seen the plane flown or even moved lately. He said that it had been sitting unused for years.

The pictures in the ad looked beautiful but it turned out that they were from years before. The ad promised that a fresh annual would be included in the price. I was promised that it was going to be completed before we arrived.

The shyster we were dealing with showed up and was every bit as bad as any used car salesman that I had ever dealt with. Of course the battery was dead. I pulled the prop around a couple of times and there was no compression on two of the four cylinders. This is one of the reasons that it took so long for us to find a good airplane to buy. People think that because a factory plane has to have an annual and regular maintenance to be flown legally that this means that there will be less hidden problems than with a used car.

But that is not the case. Buying a used airplane typically has more pitfalls than buying a used car and the sellers typically will attempt to mislead more often than someone trying to sell a car. We did not intend to spend two years buying an airplane. We did have many adventures during the process and learned a lot and met a lot of great people. Fortunately we had friends who helped us and by the end of our journey we were a lot more street wise.

Because of some of what you have said I was surprised to hear that you were/are already an airplane owner. It just does not feel like you are someone who went through the same type of experiences that we did. With the General Aviation fleet having gotten so much older than it was when we were looking... I do not believe that finding a good plane has gotten any easier. Good luck finding your dream 172!