Hot Rods Scammers finally got me.

There is a alot of salvage ***led vehicles sole out of both Dearborn and Warren. The Detroit area craigslist is full of salvage ***led vehicles. My neighbor owns a body shop and told me he has had to repair o few of the salvage ***le vehicles. The repairs on them are done by hacks. Really ****s getting burned like that. I think I would be going after the seller for fraud.

 

Doesn't even have to have a ***le for that to happen! I traded a 68 Caprice in on a used 74 Chevy pickup back in 1978 at a Chevy dealership. A few weeks later my Uncle who worked in town was telling me about a store robbery that happened, and the car they used was that 68 Caprice. When the cops ran the numbers on the car, it came back as tagged in my name! The courthouse had never changed the registration. Somehow they found out that the car had been bought at the Chevy dealer, so they never contacted me.

That same Uncle was who I had gotten the Caprice from originally. He worked for the phone company, so he knew everybody in town, and they all knew him. He got ribbed about selling his car to a bunch of robbers, when it fact it was the Chevy dealer that did it. I always figured he was the one who told the cops the car was no longer mine, but he never told me if he did or didn't.

 

The ins/salvaged ***le is interesting,in Feb of 16 my daughter *** ended someone when traffic suddenly stopped, the air bags went off, ins totaled back to us with a salvage ***le, I had a shop rebuild it, the ins said it would keep the same ins it had before of full coverage, the ins co State farm.

 

My mom said when she was young they would chop off a thiefs hand with a machete (Honduras) when they would get cought. Then you would see them you would know they were thiefs. No one is about thier word anymore, kinda sad.
It's more than just decoration.

 

aThis state sends you back a clear ***le if you buy one that has a salvage ***le. I bought my OT daily as a rebuilder with a salvage ***le and it came back clear. There are two shops in town that just rebuild wrecks and resell them. No hidden thing as you see the wrecked car sitting out at the side of the shop, you see them working on it and you see it out front all shiny a few days later. One does rather high end cars and they really look sharp when they sit out front. The other does slightly older and usually smaller cars. Add to that we have three or four curbsiders in town who always have several cars for sale. I've seen guys take buyers in to do the transfers just about every time I go to get tabs or do other license/***le work around here. I'd say it is because they don't trust the buyer to transfer the ***le otherwise and we have a huge number of uninsured drivers here locally.

 

Tag, you're it. You'll have a problem if/when you go to sell or trade in the car. Your buying audience will be severely diminished. You'll find a lot of people won't even consider buying a car with a salvaged ***le even if all the repair work from the "total" was do***ented as mainly cosmetic vs. structural problems.

It's like buying a home without proper research, then finding out it's in a flood plain or has a cracked slab/foundation issues.

 

The more time that p***es since it ‘became’ a branded ***le, the category of the car and the older the car gets, the more miles it ac***ulates, the less the perceived value is affected. The OP did not say how much he paid for this car, only that “he saved about $1,500 off retail value”. The percentage of it’s retail value that $1500 represents is significant.

In other words, if the car’s retail value is $15k....then 10% ....meh.....not such a good deal. But, if the retail value was $6k (paying $4.5k) then 25% savings is a pretty good compensation if the car is safe and dependable. Drive the car for say, four years and 40,000 miles, and sell it for $2.5k, .....$500 a year for 10,000 miles use is pretty cheap transportation. And, at $2,500 price point, most buyers won’t much care about the branded ***le......only that the car runs well.

Ray