How To Find Out If a Car Is a Salvage Vehicle

June 29th, 2009

Have you bought a car that has given you trouble from day one? Do you feel that your vehicle is about to fall down around your ears every time you start the ignition? Do you feel that the frame isn’t as strong as it should be? Then maybe you have been sold a salvaged vehicle without being informed. This could lead to disastrous results, in fact, this could be fatal and you shouldn’t lose any time on checking it out. Your first priority needs to be to get a Vehicle History Report in order to determine whether it has had a junk or salvage title.

Do remember that thousands of vehicles are damaged every year in accidents or natural calamities. Those that are seriously damaged are supposed to be consigned to the junk heap or used only for spare parts. Unfortunately, there are many unscrupulous insurance companies that don’t declare these vehicles as junk salvage and, instead, sell them to rebuilders, repair shops and junk shops, who in turn ‘fix’ these vehicles just about enough to pass a basic scrutiny and resell them.

These rebuilt vehicles are not up to the standards required to be road-worthy in terms of mechanical or safety norms. And yet, mandatory safety instructions are not carried out because the insurance company may not have given a vehicle title that declared the vehicle as a salvage vehicle. This leads to a number of hidden defects in the car that could result in a tragic accident.

If you suspect the authenticity of the vehicles title, you need to have the car checked out by an experienced mechanic. Some of the important factors to be taken into consideration include the condition of the airbag. Sometimes, blown airbags are not replaced and some companies have been known to sell airbag covers that are fake but look real.

These rebuilt vehicles often have parts that should have been replaced, but were not. In fact, they are often not even repaired at all. Another common problem is with the damaged vehicle frames. They are often not even straightened. To add insult to injury, there are some repair shops that actually use the front half of one vehicle with the back half of another.

One of the primary reasons for this thriving market in salvage vehicles is the availability of the vehicles at prices which are thousands of dollars lower than cars or trucks that have not been salvaged. The profits in this category are enormous since the value drops by 20% to 50%.

One way to check out the value and condition of your vehicle is to approach a dealer in new cars who sells a similar brand of car and ask for the value of a trade in without revealing that it is a salvage vehicle. After you get a figure from the dealer, tell him that it is a salvage vehicle and watch the figure change! Most reputed car dealers will not touch a salvage vehicle because they don’t want to be responsible for a fatal accident.

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