Great 4Runner deal, but used to have salvage title - HELP!!

bcnland

New member
Ladies and gentlemen,

I am looking for a second car for my wife. I turns out that there is a 2001 4Runner in pretty good condition, only 41k miles and all the bells and whistles. The price is only $8,500
 
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YES YES YES. It is my understanding that you will never be able to get a loan on a salvage title because they will not know what they will be able to re-coup since it is salvaged. I have never heard of a vehicle being salvaged because it had been stolen??? Why would that matter. Second of all, if you dont mind, someone else might. Have you run the vin thru carfax? That would be the first place I would start.
 
I would definitely not buy a vehicle with a salvage title. You are looking for trouble, especially when it comes to sell the vehicle. You will lose money and people will feel the same way as you when they find out that information. I have heard of vehicles getting salvage titles when stolen. It was probably completely stripped or could have been damaged when stolen. You definitely want to find out the condition of the truck when recovered (dents, parts missing, broken parts). For all you know, it could have been repainted. I would definitely think twice when purchasing this 4Runner. Don't hold me to this, but I thnk when a vehicle gets a salvage title for being stolen, there had to be some kind of damage to it.
 
In Most Cases, when a Vehicle get a salvage title, the damage is about 70% Plus to value, or they paid it off the claim, then it was recovered. Since the Insurance company declared it a total loss, it will have the Salvage title. At least this is in California. I work for an Insurance Company and do Homeowners claims, so i dont have much experence in Auto.

I owned a 95 Civic EX that had a Salvage Title when i was in collage. I bought it from my cousin, who bought it new. I saw it when it was smashed, it did not look that bad.It was a decent car, but it always pulled to the right. That where the frame rail had a crease it it. Would i buy another Salvaged car, most likely no. There is no real way of telling of the repairs were done correctly.
 
I would run a carfax on the VIN to verify the history of the vehicle. Often times salvage titles are cleared by going out-of-state or by repairing the damages. There's alot going on in used car sales so you want to be careful. The vehicle doesn't necessarily has to be in an accident or recovered from a theft. It's possible it has prior water damage from a flood or unfortunate offroading incident :D
 
My father owns an autobody repair shop and my family drove vehicles with salvage titles for years. Of course, we did the work ourselves, and chose carefully which total wrecks to buy and repair. My family always drove vehicles nicer than we could otherwise afford because of this, and for the most part, we did not have any major issues. Probably the worse case was a Ford F-150 my dad fixed that took a hard front end hit. The steering would never line up, no matter what we did, but the truck ran great.

If you can confirm why the title is salvage and the reason doesn't scare you, and if you want the vehicle to drive without worrying about what you'll be able to sell it for down the line, I think it is a risk worth taking.
 

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