Quote:
Originally Posted by War_Wagon
Wait a sec...people buy cars at auction for cheap, then sell them for profit? So THAT'S how it's supposed to work, I've just been sitting on them, hoping they somehow make me money ha ha.
It's amazing what people forget to tell you about used cars when you look at them. My mom bought a Mustang from a guy my dad worked with, he had had it since new. They didn't bother checking the history, as he said all that ever happened to it was "It got broken into once". As soon as I saw it, I thought to myself "Hmmm, nice car, but those seats are out of a '93 and this car is a '91." So I did an insurance check after the fact - $11,000 theft claim against it. So it got stolen, gutted, recovered, then put back together by the insurance company. Also explained why the inner fender bolts were finger tight. It's always waaaaaay easier to do your research up front, than to try and get your money back.
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According to Carfax, this car was stolen twice! It was declared a total loss the second time. Ten weeks later it received the salvage title. The guy said that Arizona changes the title to "salvage" after a theft, but it was not stolen from him, it was not returned to him, and he certainly had not owned it for two years like he kept saying. It became salvage when it was recovered after the insurance paid the actual owner.
I kind of wondered when there was a consistent but small delay when asked about the history, like when the mechanic asked if the timing belt had been replaced.
When I walked up, money in hand, I went to see when the registration expired, and was surprised that he had a temporary registration.
Why would you have a temporary registration on a car that you have owned for two years?
None of his story made any sense.
Then I saw that the title was only two weeks old and for salvage, that seemed more important than the fact that it had the name of some auto and boat salvage company (I think). It had been signed over to him. He said that he asked the DMV and they said that it was fine without a notary stamp, but that I could talk to them, which sounded like a very good idea.
If you look at the salvage pictures, the car was in better shape than many cars on Craigslist (there are 25-30 salvage cars for sale in the Phoenix area right now). However Carfax says that it is worth $2,440 below Blue Book, which is $1,951.
I think the real victim here is the Civic!