Salvage or "branded" titles are presenting a problem, but also an opportunity in the marketplace today. It's true that most buyers bring the "old" mindset to purchasing a car with a "branded title", which in a nutshell is "this car must have been a wreck and some unscrupulous con artist has taken it out of a
junkyard, put lipstick on it and is now trying to rip off an innocent, unknowing buyer"
Yes, that has and can happen, but there are going to be more and more perfectly good cars for sell at a big discount because the title is "branded".
The way cars are manufactured today, individual
parts can be very expensive (Cadillac XLT
headlight assembly $4500, per side).
So when a car is in an accident, your insurance company must use
OEM, new
parts if available. So the repair shop estimate for what looks like a medium level repair, to say the hood, left fender, grill and wheel could make the repair estimate with paint, remove and replace, discarding old
parts, etc can be enough to "total" the car.
A repair shop, using used
parts or interchangable
parts, none factory paint and repairing a fender verses replacing it might cut the costs by thousands and in the end the repaired vehicle is "fixed" as well as the one done with
OEM.
Because of this, there are some enterprising dealers that specialize in "branded titles". They sell perfectly good cars at about a 25% discount and end up with very happy customers.
It's an approach with a very promising future, think Houston and Florida.
It will take some time to get the buying public to change the way they think about the words "
salvage title", but the price difference will accomplish that very soon.
Given that you have had and driven your car for some time after the repair and the fact that it's a unique and special car, you will get pretty close to what you could have sold it for as a "clean title".
Carfax is pretty reliable. It's going to be harder and harder for anyone to "launder" a title and it is rapidly becoming a main stream business opportunity.
It's a big advantage if you know or better have pictures of the damage (could also be from a theft, flood, fire, collision), who did the repair,
parts used and was it inspected.
But that's the new future for "branded " titles and it's going to give us all more options. Just be sure to do your "due diligence" and you could end up with a very nice car for a lot less than what your neighbor paid for the same car.
