subaru with salvage title

Hi, I see a lot of cars with salvage titles all allegedly due to hail damage. What is the deal with this? Are they legit and the prices reasonable. For example there are two on Craiglist at a local shop one is a 2014 manual with 31k miles for 12995, the other a limited also 2014 with 32k miles at 15995 or so.
Advice?thanks.

 

don't buy salvage titled cars for over $10k would be my first advice. second, Carfax the car, if it was salvaged it should show up on the report and why.

 

Salvage cars can be fine, IF you know what your looking for. If you can look over the car closely, and see exactly what was done, and how it was done.

There's a shop in the cities that seems to like to take a deposit before the car is done, just walk away from that kind of deal.



I've owned several salvage cars, one I bought crashed and fixed myself. My mom's last 2 cars were both salvaged from medium front end damage. Previous one was a 2001 Legacy L, purchased with about 25k miles on it in 2005, sold a few years ago to my cousin with about 210k on it. Current is a 2012 Impreza Premium, purchased with 20k on it in 2013, has about 80k on it now. Both had a few issues, the 2012 required another $1k or so to get the airbags to work, the 2001 had butt splices for the headlight connectors that caused several gremlins. But they were each ~$10k cheaper than a non-salvage equivalent at the time....

 

The shop is Stillwater Motors in St. Paul. I was thinking of looking for a late model Forester with a manual transmission.

 

If the salvage is legit from only hail damage they can be great cars and you can get them cheap. It would make sense if you don't care what the exterior looks like up close and if you never want to sell it.
I know a sales guy who drives a **** ton for work who always buys hail damage salvage cars because he puts like 50k miles on the car per year and doesn't care what it looks like.

 

I'll give them a call and see how it runs. I wonder what it wil cost to fix up.

Any other advice re buying a used forester/salvage?

thanks

 

Hail can easily total out a car if there's enough of it and obviously it's only cosmetic, so I'd have no reservations about driving a car with a salvage title IF it really was hail. A vehicle history check should show the type of damage that it sustained, so if you're skeptical at all you should definitely get one done. With salvage titles due to collision damage, it's a lot more difficult unless you really know what you're looking at. A car might look fine from the outside but have all sorts of half-assed "repairs" hiding underneath (seen it way too many times). Flood damage is almost always a death sentence for a car unless literally all the electronics have been gone through. Sometimes it takes months for things to corrode enough to start causing problems, then you're opening a very big can of worms.

 

So, this is the car.
http://www.stillwaterautosalesinc.com/2014_Subaru_Forester_Oakdale_MN_264592817.veh

What do you guys think? I called the seller and he wants to negotiate a price before i get the car checked out. I wanted to take it to J and M auto in Osseo to see what they thought.

Zehyani

 

You can negotiate a price all you want, just don't sign ANY paperwork until you get it inspected.

I'm going to assume you are not a car enthusiast and just looking for cheap transportation. I could not look at a hail riddled car every time I drove it no matter what I paid for it. Be prepared to drive it to it's grave as it will be a hard sell if you change your mind later. Every time I see one of these pock-marked late-models in a parking lot I think "another douche that took a big insurance check and spent it on hookers and blow instead of getting their car fixed".

 

And considering that the vehicle was either bought back by the owner or at auction by the dealer for a price probably around 30-50% of the original value, I wouldn't pay much more than that for it unless some of the damage had already been repaired. As pillboy pointed out, you also want to be sure you're ok with driving a car that's covered in dings because it would cost a fortune to have repaired and you wouldn't find it easy to sell if you change your mind. I'd only buy it if the damage doesn't bother you, the price is right, and you don't plan on selling it.

 

Tangledupinblu, thanks for posting the KBB page. I had not thought of going to it and checking out prices.

Think I am going to pass on this car and keep looking. 2014 was the first year of a new motor.

Ideally I would like to build a manual forester with HID headlights, fog lights, winter package, comfortable seats, tow hitch and roof rack. A small, low pressure turbo would be nice as well, but that is not going to happen.

 

It sounds like you want an older XT. You should be able to get or add everything you want.

 

Easiest thing is to type the vin into google images... youll see a pic of the car at the auction then youll know if it was hail or something else