[onewhippedpuppy]

I would never do it without an independent, professional inspection prior to any money changing hands. Something I've learned in my buying and selling cars hobby is that people sometimes have dramatically different interpretations of your questions, seeing a car in person is your only really safe bet. I've looked at many cars advertised as "nice" only to find that they are anything but, and the owners seem genuinely surprised. Some are just d-bags, but others are genuinely good people that simply don't see cars through the same critical eyes as I do. A non mechanically savvy person might not notice a suspension clunk. A dog lover might not see any issue with Lab hair pasted to the Alcantra. I make a habit of asking very specific, pointed questions, but there's still the chance that you simply aren't communicating with the seller. Note that this is in reference to private sellers, I've found that dealerships almost always over describe the car because they frankly don't care about being honest.

I find a LOT of good deals on Craigslist, use crazedlist.org in your Firefox browser. It allows you to search multiple Cragislist locations at the same time. Autotrader and cars.com are also useful. Finding cars in KS sucks, but OKC is a short drive and Denver and DFW are a short plane ride away. Utilize a one-way rental car or fly out, then drive it home. Then there's no worries on getting something you don't want. A GLI/GLS isn't so rare that you can't find one within 300 miles if you look.