I recently just got myself an ek1, took me 3 months of searching to find a decent one!!! My dad's also a mechanic so that helped out in the search (although sometimes it made it worse). Do the research on that particular model using www.redbook.com.au or something like that or better yet a search on OH.

I remember 2 particular dealerships. One dealership which stocked a fair amount of civics actually asked me what the difference between a cxi and gli was... I just found it funny how a salesmans asks a customer to clarify what model has what features.

At the other dealership, i was looking at getting a Corolla (05 model). The Corolla's were detuned from Oct 2005 to meet new emission laws so the power decreased from 100kw down to 93kw. I asked the salesman what's the build date of the particular car since i wanted the one with the 100kw engine. He asked me why i wanted to know the build date and i explained to him about the power decrease. This was his reply:


oh...yes. I remember that now. They decreased the kilowatts to reduce fuel consumption but they've increased the horsepower.
So just be sure you know as much as possible about that particular model because sales people don't know everything.