I've looked at a lot of Carfax records on cars being sold by dealers. I'm amazed at how many come from midwest auctions, especially cars from the east coast/New York. Should I be weary of New York cars that a dealership bought at midwest auctions? Were there a lot of flood cars coming out of the east coast?

Does Carfax always show if a car has been in a flood?

Does anyone know what formula Carfax uses to add or subtract dollars from a certain car? Some G35 Carfaxes say up to +$410.00, while others say -$400.00. How do they figure these values?

Thanks...

 

95% of used cars on dealer lots come from dealer only auctions (most around the country owned by manheim auto auction).

 

my car was a rental and bought back at auction.

a word of advice....very carefully go over the car outside and inside. there were numerous dings on the doors that were tough to see and a burn on the headliner i missed. i could have haggled on the price more.

 

I live in Wisconsin, so my major market cities for Infiniti are Milwaukee and Chicago. So I would expect most auction cars to come from the neighboring states. But I continue to see a lot of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut cars. Why? Wouldn't those cars stay near the east coast? Can a midwest dealer hide problems on cars he buys from these east coast states?

 

My car was bought at a auction from the dealer I bought it from. It came from missouri and luckily it in really good shape. I made them fix some of the issues with the car during the negotiations.
I also made sure to call the dealer that was listed on the carfax and asked them what services they had done on the car. They were very helpful.

 

Just from experience when I was shopping around not a commercial but I used www.autocheck.com instead of CarFax. I found that carfax did not have as much information on the auction cars as Autocheck. Ie I found Autocheck marked some as frame damage and stuff while Carfax did not show an issue.

 

I would guess that with over 30,000,000 people that the area provides the largest concentration of available used cars in general, next to California.

 

watch out for lemons!

 

Definitely get autocheck...it offers unlimited checks for a month still and shows things that carfax does not. In my area a good place to find our cars is Atlanta. I had several bookmarked for great prices and then when I used autocheck I found that most of them had been sold at auction as "frame damaged". they were good titles but were apparently wrecked when sold.

Another thing about auction cars is that often you don't get both keys or owners' manuals because people at auctions tend to steal them.

Otherwise there is nothing wrong with getting a car sold at auction--most used cars go through the auction process, especially cars like ours that are often leased for 2 or 3 years when new.

 

flip of a coin. 50/50 chance.

 

my g35x was bought at an auction (got into an auction with a friend who owns a dealership so i could see the car myself) — paint was in so-so condition, but it runs great (at 37k mi now) and i haven't had any issues. slapped some new tires on it and i'm happy

most cars from used dealerships are from auctions (like manheim and ****) — it isn't a bad thing per se, but i probably wouldn't have bought it if i couldn't have seen it in person myself. i got lucky in the respect that i was able to go to the auction and check it out myself

 

My car was bought from an auction. Inspect the car carefully and don't skim over any part. My car was bought from Florida and it was in flood area el oh el...... :\

 

I negotiate the hell out of any flaws...they fix them or I don't buy. Secondly...make them prove what kind of inspections/maintenance was done on the car. My salesman told me they did this multi-point check...but when I told them I wanted a list of all things checked they couldn't produce one...so, before I bought it I made them check everything, change oil etc, etc.....
I am happy with my purchase so far...