Hi all -

I was taught to not even blink at cars with salvage titles. But I know that people have accidents and things do get fixed to factory spec. I once bought a 1992 Pathfinder that had been in an accident and ran great to over 200K.

I'm sure there are a variety of opinions, but wondering what everyone thinks. I've seen some pretty good deals on 2004-2006 6mt's with accidents but I'm still very leery..

Thanks as usual

 

Salvage title means it was deemed a total loss by the insurance. I would stay away from it

 

Find out why it was salvaged and who did the repairs. If there's a dealership you can trust have them do a full inspection before buying.

 

Also if you buy salvage, you should plan to run it until it dies or take a hit when you resell. Nobody wants salvage... unless they are looking for a smoking deal.

Myself I would not touch it no matter what

 

As a rule I'd tell you to stay away from any car with a Salvage title. We see members cars all the time on Driver that get in a slight accident and their insurance company totals the car. If you have good mechanical skills and find the right G at a good price with low mileage that might be to your advantage!
Gary

 

Good advice. Also, ask the buyer for the before pics.

^ Not good advice. It's not like a new car where you just lost 6-8k as soon as you leave the lot. A salvage car sells at around 30% less than it's equivalent clear title car. So you should expect to pay around 7k if the same clear title sells for around 10k. The only money you lose when you want to resell it is the same you would lose as if it were a clear title. Depriciation for the extra mileage you put on it and the extra months you owned it, etc. I can state for a fact, g35's are not hard to sell, salvage or not, as long as they don't have a ton of miles and the repair work was done properly.

Personally, I'll never buy another new or used clear title car again. As long as the repair has been done right, only you will know it's a salvage, and you can take all that extra saved money and use it on modding. Here's some before/after pics of some of the cars I've had. Hopefully, after seeing how these turned out, you'll be less afraid

http://s76.photobucket.com/user/psyc...%20and%20After

 

It depends 100% on why title is salvage. The only salvage title car I have bought was a 01 Firebird Formula but it was salvage due to theft recovery. All that was wrong was broken window and messed up ignition.

Never buy a salvage from accident or flood. You never know if the repairs were done properly or not.

 

Remember a salvage title only can sometimes only mean that the insurance company felt the value of the car was less than the repairs needed. I once was able to convince my insurance rep to not salvage a car because of all the added mods I had done. So the car was fixed right and never had a problem. Not very car is like this but they do exist. Take extreme caution and if the seller seems shady in an way move on.

 

I paid 7k for a 04 g35 coupe 113k miles no problems clean from inside and out like literally super clean. The owner showed me pictures when the accident happened. No frame damage. I feel like i saved a couple thousand from buying a clean title.

 

As others have said, it all depends on the reason for salvage. Usually the damage had to be x% of the vehicle value to total it out.

Back when these things were new, that meant $20K+ of damage or so. Now that these are cheap sub $10K used cars, having the car keyed or vandalized could potentially total it out. So you need to look into WHY the car was salvaged. If it's something superficial, you can save a lot of $$$. I've seen cars totalled because the interior was vandalized and the leather knifed up.


I was looking into a new(er) car i would personally steer clear of a salavage on say a 2010-2012. That would mean a major accident. When searching for a used car (sub $10K) I would want to know what the reason of the salvage was for. I personally steer clear of major accident cars. Sometimes they are just never the same. Had a friend repair a wrecked car and proceed to have electrical issues with it at times. Turned out a harness had gotten pinched and was not replaced. Every time the car drove in heavy rain and got that harness wet, the car had issues.

 

I would stay away from salvage title cars that people repaired then threw up on craigslist trying to flip and make a buck.. there are a ton of shady backyard mechanics out there with absolutely no qualms about ripping you off.

That being said if you have some mechanical knowledge you can get a smoking deal on a great car by going with a salvage title. I currently drive an 06 M45 that I bought at auction that was totaled. Here's a thread I posted with pics: https://g35driver.com/forums/m-spot/...t-project.html

I had to do some repairs and dink around with it a bit, but I'm in it for less than half what the identical car was selling for at local dealerships at the time. Interior is mint, everything works great, I love it. True that I can't resell it for what a clean title would sell for, but I have no intentions of selling it and even if I did the discount is comparable to what I saved in the beginning. Plus as time goes on the price of clean title vs salvage becomes closer. I'd much rather have the $10K I saved in the bank the whole time. Oh and another benefit is that I only had to pay tax on the $5200 I paid for the chassis.. not the whole sale price of a complete car. Instant $1200 savings in my case.

Oh and +1 about never, ever, ever buying a flood car.