Gotta love salvage titles!

Bored this morning & saw a Tacoma pop up on my ebay feed, salvage title.


Before: Located in MD



Quote from the ebay ad:
"We have bought 'Total Loss" cars from Insurance companies with door dings, extremely minor fender bender, theft recovered vehicles with absolutely no damage. In brief Total Loss does not always mean that the car was in a bad wreck or had extensive damage. We do not buy or sell anything with major damage."

"This car was involved in a minor front accident....we replaced the front bumper, fender, radiator, radiator support, headlights, and grille."

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2015-Toyota...-4-Door-/302275230248?&_trksid=p2056016.l4276


After:




If this vehicle with relatively low miles was totaled by the insurance company,sold as salvage & rebuilt, there must be some serious shortcuts,aftermarket,used or stolen parts in the rebuild.


Edit: Example of the shortcuts: Picture from the ebay ad.

 

and they still want almost 25k

 

Damn it's still 23k?! Insurance has to estimate the damage and repairs higher than the blue book to deem it totaled right?

 

I thought it was somewhere between 60-80% to total.

Edit: Maybe I should contact the seller & see if they want to buy my take off parts from when I added my supercharger. Then their ruse would be complete!

 

I agree a total might not be as bad as it implies. Two airbags, a bumper, grill, condenser, headlights and fenders would qualify many older/higher mile rides.

And owning a salvage can be an awesome deal, IF

You pay about 1/2 private party.

Your insurance carrier will write it. Many won't

You intend to keep it a long time. Long time. As in when its really dead.

Or you recognize if you wish to sell it, you have a limited market and the price, again, needs to be really low.

 

I had an accident 3 years ago, not nearly as extensive as the first photo. Repairs cost $6,500, no air bags deployed. Damaged bumper cover, small dent in fender, lots of small pieces of broken plastic from a headlight, grill etc. No damage to the hood.

About 5 years ago someone keyed my drivers door, pushed so hard there was a small dent. Repairs cost just north of 2K.

The cost was for repairs only, my insurance approved and recommended the body shop, I did not use a rental vehicle.

 

Wow.

I had a new Toyota door installed, painted, and all the hardware/internals from mine transfered over for $1600. From a show grade shop that I wasn't even buds with.

Ya'll are expensive out there!

 

Its worth about $10,000 as a salvage,and that's even a no go if your insurance like mine (State Farm)will not even insure it,its then worth nothing !

 

Am I missing something, or is this just missing the cover? The truck looks great otherwise.

 

It already sold?? I figured at 23k it would be around much longer than that

 

Wow, they made bank on that truck.

 

I thought when a title was salvaged, most insurance companies would refuse to insure it at that point?

It's one thing for a vehicle to be totaled and fixed, another for the title to actually be salvaged.

 

Depends on the insurance company. Most big ones won't at all but others might and only offer "liability only".

 

X2. What shortcuts were taken?

 

Looks like a nice clean truck to me, missing the vanity cover for the engine but that's no biggie. I wouldn't buy a rebuilt without inspecting it and driving it but to me there is nothing wrong with it. You save money and they make money.

 

Wonder if it drives as nice as it looks...

 

I doubt anyone will respond since there's really no true way of knowing if shortcuts were taken.

 

Call me anal but I look for the small detail, when I see that the cover is missing thats not small detail.I would be all over that thing to see what else wasnt right. I have a friend who just bought a 03 Tacoma. He wanted me to look it over before he bought it. It had a light front hit,aftermarket fender,lights & grill. Undercarriage was recently painted & the kicker was the odometer had around 80k but the timing cover had a sticker saying the belt was changed 90 something k miles & almost 2 years earlier.

The look on the guys face seling it (local used car auction reseller) was priceless but he came up with a line of shit & my friend bought it. He didn't want to go into any debt buying a vehicle & 10k cash was his limit.

 

Theres a reason why salvage vehicles are cheaper and harder to sell. Remember generally an insurance co will go 80 per cent of the value to repair.......

 

All the real good insurance companies wouldn't touch the truck,I hope whom ever bought it is aware of that fact,anyway they paid way too much for a salvage title truck.