The Importance Of A Carfax

[ABV]

Well, just for craps and laughs I checked the VIN on my old Silver '98 GSX. I sold this car almost 2 years ago, but I just wanted to check for fun, because I heard the kid that bought it from me had wrecked it.

Well, he did wreck it, but I also found some other red flags.

IT HAD A SALVAGE TITLE WHEN I BOUGHT IT!!!!! I bought it from a dealership, so I figured it must be a good car, but it had a salvage title that was somehow covered up, because the title looked clean when I bought it. But here's the good part. I bought the car in March of 2001 with 49,002 miles on it. When the salvage title was reported in November of 2000 (5 months before I bought it) it had 76,577 miles. Now I know car technology has come a long way, but I've never known a car to go down in miles on it's own.

So basically, I bought from a dealership, for full market value at the time, a car with a salvage title and odometer fraud.

Moral of the story, do a carfax before you buy a car. Even if you buy it from a dealership. Ask the salesman to do a carfax on it. If he doesn't do it, walk out the door. I feel extremely lucky that I didn't have any problems with that car, where I could have been screwed.

[Emcee gsxtc]

Holy shit! I am afraid to do a carfax on my car, but with all the problems I have had I would assume it fell out of the sky and was thrown together in a dsm junkyard with random performance peices.

[AJ]

Mark go after the delaeship for fucking you. It's the american way!

[SlowWhite]

Seriously - I wonder if you could go after them about it.

Cause basically they were over charging you for a car. And maybe you could get an adjustment on the money you were paying on it? Might be worth a look into depending on how much money you actually paid on the loan, or what ever.

Anyone have access to a "free" lawyer that is willing to check into this for him?

[ABV]

Ok, I kind of feel like a dumbass now, but maybe not. According to the carfax that I got, everything I said above is true. But after looking at it closer, if I took the date of the salvage title, and moved it up 2 years to November of 2002, everything else fits into place. The mileage, and the dates would all fall in place correctly. And the more I think about it, that's around the time that I heard that the kid totaled it.

So I can draw one of 2 conclusions.

#1 everything said in my first post.

#2 Some pallywacker at the DMV screwed up the date by 2 years, and basically ruined the Vehicle history report of this car. Of course my first reaction when I saw it was like "wtf mate".

I guess either one is possible, but the second one seems more likely. But I still stand by my point that it's probably a good idea to get a history report before you buy a car.

This is what showed up for my GSX.

[BuildADSM]

carfax sucks! It is a good reference but true all the time. One time my brother got a day of unlimited ones. His friends GSX that had been in 2 wrecks (cops attended to both) one of which it was totaled and retitled. THE CAR HAD A SALVAGE TITLE BUT IT SAID THAT IT WAS CLEAN! It said that the car had never been wrecked. this was the same case with several other cars.

Then one of our cars it said that it had never been wrecked when it had been wrecked twice (both cops came to).

He said that they couldn't believe how many wrecks and such had been skipped over.

so your second case is probably the one that is correct.

[AJ]

Damn Mark, that car got beat to shit after you sold it.

[ABV]

Originally posted by DSMStyle@Jul 21 2004, 11:32 AM
Damn Mark, that car got beat to shit after you sold it.

It got beat to shit when I owned it too. :secret: I just didn't hit anything with it.

[520Talon]

I have brought cars from other states with salvage titles. When you go for the state transfer they have always come back as clean titles for me. I don't know about transfering from person to person. All a salvage is a little X on the peice of paper. Easy to miss if you can't loose your job and you don't really care.