"Salvage" titles

[Rollins <73500.616@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

We have had very good results buying cars with salvage titles. Our '82
Spider has one and the car is damn near perfect. We checked it out
carefully before buying. We had a very-experienced, Alfa-restorer friend =
go
along to look at it. Best we could figure out was that the car was in a
minor, front-end collision But the cost to repair it at normal shop rates=

was so high relative to the book value that the insurance company decided=

to declare it a total loss. It was bought cheap and fixed up by a private=

party, who then sold it to us, at a profit. The repairs and total repaint=

were very good. Because of the "salvage" title we able to buy the car bel=
ow
market. We have owned the car for four years and put a lot of miles on it=
,
and it has been and is a great car.

Several of the cars we have bought for our kids -- Honda, Toyota, Nissan,=

VW Golf -- =

had salvage titles. Two of them ran for huge numbers of miles, in spite o=
f
the usual "zero maintenance" program followed by many young people who ha=
ve
grown up in the era of disposable cars. The Toyota developed a noisy rear=

axle at about the one-billion-mile mark. The VW is fairly recent, but is
running fine after a few routine-maintenance items were attended. In ever=
y
case, the salvage title saved us a lot of money.

Of course, there is a risk in buying salvage cars, but usually the reason=

for the salvage title is physical damage to the body. This is often easie=
r
to inspect than the insides of the mechanical components.

Paul Rollins
Vancouver, WA

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