In getting my old beater ready to trade in, I finally opened the title envelope which had been in the safe deposit box for 10 years.<br><br>Lo and behold--it says it is a salvage title. Well, that's news to me as I bought it from an upstanding citizen from a bordering state and was pretty sure there was no such note on the title when I bought it, or I in all likelihood wouldn't have.<br><br>I called my state's DMV and they look it up on microfiche. Sure enough, the car was owned by an insurance company in my state (and at that time had the salvage note on the title), then sold to the guy I bought from in the neighboring state. His state, bless their hearts, removed the note from the title, so when I bought it, all looked good.<br><br>See a scam coming here? Buy salvage cars from my state, title them, thus getting the 'salvage title' blemish removed, then sell them to unsuspecting dopes like me.<br><br>In my case, I kept the thing 10 years and it's now a beater so the value is essentially unchanged. I will be severely (although there ain't a thing I can do about it) if this causes the dealership that I planned to trade it in to decides they don't want it. But if this was a relatively new car and I'd only had it for a year or two, it could reduce the value by thousands of dollars.<br><br>Moral of the story, I guess, is that if you're buying used, do a title search. Buyer beware! I don't trust myself to buy used any more.<br><br>What a sucker. But I could never tell anything was wrong with it and maybe there wasn't. I guess cars get wrecked all the time and unless we throw them away, they will get back into the system.

 

That's the beauty of the internet.<br><br>Soooo much easier to do title searches and such nowadays.<br><br>I did one on the 2002 Durango my sister bought a couple of months ago.<br>CarFax was doing a free search promotion along with MSNBC, otherwise I wouldn't have thought of it.<br>This was after she had bought it though.<br><br>Found out it was owned by a Rental Company in Texas.<br>Would have been a red flag for me, but as it was already bought and paid for, oh well.<br>(didn't look too abused)<br><br>phox