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.