"Don't make
a $10,000 mistake!
Millions
of used cars have costly hidden problems.
Salvage history?Odometer
fraud?Multiple owners?Flood damage?Major accident damage?This shadow auto industry now annually beats, bends,and bangs out
as many as
400,000 rebuilt
wrecks that are five or fewer model-years old, Consumer Reports estimates; no authority keeps track of the total. That represents
3 percent of the 13 million used vehicles sold in that model-year group in 2001. But the number looms large, because rebuilt
wrecks, like all used vehicles, are not subject to federal safety standards.Insurers
say that as much as they disdain shoddy rebuilding, they cannot stop it. "Once we sell the vehicle to a salvage yard, there's
very little we can do to influence the process," says Mary Beth McDade, a spokeswoman for Progressive Insurance, the nation's fourth largest auto insurer. The Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), a leading
highway-safety institute funded by the insurance industry, and several other
data providers hold key information that could help reveal the scope of the problem. But industry officials
say they cannot release their data, citing confidentiality concerns and contractual prohibitions. As a
result, the full extent of this murky enterprise is largely unknown.(See What we don't know.)
But according to a Consumer Reports study using data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) and the database of Carfax, a company that sells vehicle history reports to consumers and businesses, 20 percent of
vehicles that were damaged severely enough to be "totaled"--that is, labeled by an insurer as not worth repairing--after fatal
accidents in the U.S. from 1993 through
1999 were rebuilt, reregistered, and put right back on the road. "
www.Consumer
Reports.com
All offered
by local new cars dealerships certified used cars programs from all major car/truck manufacturers never were intended
to protect
consumer but to sell as many used cars as possible!!!
