Arizona Implied Warranty: Coverage, 15 Days, and Remedies

When you buy a used car from a licensed dealer in Arizona, state law hands you an implied warranty that the vehicle is safe to drive and free of defects that would significantly limit ordinary road use. That protection lasts 15 days or 500 miles from delivery, whichever comes first, and the dealer cannot sign it away in the contract. This is the core of the Arizona implied warranty on used cars under A.R.S. § 44-1267, and it operates whether or not the dealer offers any separate written warranty.¹

What the Warranty Actually Guarantees

The statute sets a functional standard, not a cosmetic one. A used vehicle meets the implied warranty of merchantability when two things are true: it runs in a safe condition under Arizona’s vehicle safety standards, and it has no defect that significantly limits its use for ordinary transportation on public roads.¹ Worn upholstery, faded paint, a scratchy radio, and the ordinary signs of age do not breach it. A failing transmission, bad brakes, or a safety defect does.

The warranty also does not cover damage you cause after you drive off the lot. Abuse, neglect, running the vehicle without proper fluids, off-road use, racing, and towing all take the problem outside the dealer’s responsibility.¹ Expect the dealer to look closely at post-sale conduct before paying for a repair.

One more baseline rule sits at the front of the statute: a dealer may not even offer the vehicle for sale unless the dealer already holds the title and the title is in the dealer’s own name.¹

How Long the Warranty Lasts

The clock starts the moment you take delivery and runs until midnight on the fifteenth calendar day or until the odometer hits 500 additional miles, whichever comes first. Fifteen days is short. If a defect has already surfaced, you don’t lose the back end of your window while the car sits in the shop: any day on which the warranty is breached, and every day the vehicle remains out of compliance after that, is excluded from the 15-day count. Miles driven to a repair shop or during testing tied to a warranty problem are likewise excluded from the 500 miles.¹ Discover a problem on day three and lose the car to the shop for a week? You still have roughly twelve days of coverage when you get it back.

Dealers Cannot Disclaim It

Here is where Arizona departs from the general rule for consumer goods. During the 15-day/500-mile window, a used motor vehicle dealer may not exclude, modify, or disclaim the implied warranty of merchantability, and may not limit a buyer’s remedies for breach except as the statute itself allows.¹ An “as is” clause buried in a dealer contract has no effect on the warranty during that period.

If a dealer tries anyway, the stakes are serious: the entire purchase agreement becomes voidable at the buyer’s option.¹ A buyer who signs a contract containing an illegal disclaimer can potentially unwind the whole sale.

The One Narrow Waiver

The statute leaves a single, tightly controlled path for a buyer to waive the warranty, and only for a specific, disclosed defect. Every one of the following must happen:

The dealer must fully and accurately disclose that the vehicle has a particular defect arising from circumstances unusual to the dealer’s normal business. This is not a hook for ordinary wear a dealer should have repaired before selling the car.
The buyer must agree to buy the vehicle after being told about the defect.
Before closing, the buyer must sign and date a specific statement printed on the first page of the sales agreement in bold-faced ten-point or larger type, written in the language used during the sales presentation, listing each defect being waived.

The required language reads: “Attention purchaser: sign here only if the dealer told you that this vehicle has the following problem(s) and that you agree to buy the vehicle on those terms,” followed by numbered lines describing each defect. If any element is missing, the waiver fails. And the dealer carries the burden of proving every step was followed, by a preponderance of the evidence.¹

What You Can Recover If the Dealer Won’t Fix It

Give the dealer written notice of the defect as soon as you find it. Before you can pursue broader remedies under Arizona’s UCC, the dealer gets a reasonable opportunity to repair the vehicle.¹ “Reasonable” is not defined by a specific number of days; it will turn on the nature of the problem and parts availability.

You share the cost of the first two repair attempts: you pay half of each repair, capped at $25 per repair. After the first two, the dealer pays the full cost.¹

If the dealer fails to fix the problem after a reasonable opportunity, the broader UCC remedies for sales transactions open up, including revoking acceptance (returning the vehicle) or recovering damages. The ceiling under § 44-1267 is the purchase price you paid.¹ Consequential losses like lost wages or rental cars are not recoverable under this statute.

Private Sales Are a Different World

These protections apply to purchases from licensed used motor vehicle dealers. Buy from a private individual and the picture changes. Arizona’s UCC only implies a warranty of merchantability when the seller is a “merchant,” meaning someone who regularly deals in that kind of goods or holds themselves out as having specialized knowledge about them.² A neighbor selling the car they’ve driven for five years isn’t a merchant, so no implied warranty attaches, and general UCC provisions let private sellers use “as is” or “with all faults” language to exclude any implied warranty that might otherwise apply.³ For a private purchase, an independent pre-purchase inspection is the closest thing to warranty protection you’ll get.

This Is Not the Lemon Law

Arizona’s lemon law (A.R.S. §§ 44-1261 through 44-1265) covers new vehicles, not used ones. It runs during the manufacturer’s express warranty period or the first two years or 24,000 miles after original delivery, whichever is shorter, and presumes a vehicle is a lemon when the same defect has gone through four or more unsuccessful repair attempts, or the vehicle has been out of service for 30 or more cumulative days.⁴ If your issue is a used car from a dealer that failed shortly after you drove it home, § 44-1267 is the statute that applies, not the lemon law.

Making the 15 Days Count

Get an independent pre-purchase inspection before you buy. Warranty coverage is a backstop, and fighting over a defect is always harder than catching it in advance. Once the car is yours, drive it under varied conditions in those first two weeks: highway, stop-and-go, cold starts, air conditioning running, loaded and unloaded. Problems that appear under normal use are precisely what this warranty is designed to reach.

If something goes wrong, put your notice to the dealer in writing immediately. A phone call alone is not enough of a record. Photograph or video the defect before the dealer touches the vehicle. Track every mile you drive to and from the repair shop so those miles stay out of your 500-mile count. Expect to pay up to $25 toward each of the first two repair attempts, and know that after that the dealer carries the cost up to what you paid for the car.

1
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 44-1267 – Used Motor Vehicles; Title; Implied Warranty of Merchantability Disclaimer; Waiver; Burden of Proof; Remedies
2
Legal Information Institute. UCC 2-104 – Definitions: “Merchant”; “Between Merchants”; “Financing Agency”
3
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 47-2316 – Exclusion or Modification of Warranties
4
Arizona Legislature. Arizona Code 44-1264 – Reasonable Number of Attempts to Conform Motor Vehicle to Express Warranty; Presumption