How to spot a previously wrecked car before purchase

I mentioned last year sometime how many of the used cars that come to the DR have had "Salvage Titles" which are automatically replaced with a new Dominican title once you bring it into the country. below is an article about how hard it is even within the USA to find a car's history before purchase.

How to watch out for previously wrecked used cars


Each year, about 6 million cars are in crashes serious enough to report to police and insurers. About 12% of these are totaled or "salvage" vehicles, and that doesn't include flood-damaged cars.
Some of these wrecked cars are rebuilt and wind up on used car lots, even at prominent dealers. That can cause problems with the vehicles' performance and safety, along with making them more difficult to resell, crash experts say.
? VIDEO: What you need to know when buying a used car
? STORY: Many year-old used cars cost almost as much as new
Crash reporting and disclosure is so spotty, some can have "clean" history reports from companies that sell them.
Some examples of problems with these history reports:
? Firefighter Bobby Smith bought a used 2003 Ford Mustang Cobra in 2010 in Indiana. In a lawsuit, Smith claimed the dealer knew the car was in a severe front-end collision. Smith says he discovered the damage when doing work on the car right after buying it. At the trial, which ended in a hung jury, Smith testified the dealership used a clean Carfax report to convince him the car had never been in a crash. The case is scheduled for retrial in January.
? When Florida-based Juan Sanchez tried to trade his 2007 Mercedes E350 in to the dealership he bought it from as a certified used car, Mercedes-Benz of Pembroke Pines showed him a Carfax report indicating he had an accident while he owned it. But in a lawsuit, Sanchez said the crash predated his purchase, and Carfax had the date wrong. In September, an arbitrator awarded Sanchez $3,500 in damages from the dealership for "unfair/deceptive acts," but denied "fraud and negligent misrepresentation" claims.
Dealers say they get duped, too. They were involved in the push for a 2009 law that requires insurance companies to share their data on totaled vehicles with a new Justice Department database, the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System.
The National Automobile Dealers Association pushed for the database because "Dealers don't want rebuilt wrecks on their lots," says NADA spokesman Bailey Wood. He says the database will "permanently red-flag severely damaged" vehicles.
Carfax spokesman Larry Gamache says his company gets salvage data from insurers that make up about 80% of the industry, police departments, crash estimators and repair facilities. Carfax doesn't believe its "data is limited in any way," Gamache says, but adds, "No report is going to have everything."
Carfax also offers to buy back any vehicle purchased based on a Carfax report that doesn't mention that its title showed it was a salvage vehicle. The company has bought back 70 cars in the 10 years it has been offering to do so.
Kansas City, Mo., plaintiff attorney Bernard Brown says his law firm has received hundreds of complaints in the last 15 years from consumers who bought cars with clean reports that turned out to have previously been "severely wrecked or flooded."
Insurance Information Institute President Bob Hartwig says insurers aren't to blame: Many older models that are totaled aren't insured, and many people get cars repaired without reporting the crashes to insurers.
Robert Duff, Smith's lawyer, says some people don't find out they bought a rebuilt wreck until they pay off the loan and see the title has been branded as a totaled vehicle.
One of his clients found more than $8,000 worth of repair receipts in the glove box ? on the way home from the dealer.
"The best way to know if the car has previously been wrecked is to have a professional inspect it ? it really isn't that expensive," says Duff. "It costs between $50 and $200, and it's money well spent."
Tips on buying a used car
Buying a used car doesn't have to mean "buying somebody else's troubles," says Jack Gillis, co-author of The Car Book. Thanks to leasing and some owners' inability to keep up with payments in this economy, Gillis notes, there are many great used vehicles available, many with time remaining on their warranties.
Key steps in the process:
? Go to a dealer or person you have good reason to trust.
? Check Consumer Reports' quality ratings and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's complaint database to see what others are saying about a vehicle you're considering.
? Get a vehicle history report. To learn of all possible crashes and problems, get a report From Carfax, AutoCheck and the Justice Department's new database at nmvtis.gov.
? Have an independent mechanic check the vehicle for mechanical, frame and electronic problems. Flood damage can wreak havoc on a car's electronics.

This is what i wrote this past November about used cars.

I was living in Bonao, circa 1993-2004, i was playing poker at a family member's house when someone came over to look at some cars he was selling. we stopped the poker game so that he could go outside and show some cars he just imported; every one sitting around the poker table immediately got up and ran to the bathroom, because, as many people already know, when playing poker, no one wants to leave the poker table--even to pee. Of course, this sometimes results in urinating in your pants, but it could also contribute to being at the table when that straight flush is dealt to you. As a result, we all sit around suffering for hours...sometimes even days before our bladders explode and we're carried off to the emergency room so that some other idiot can take our seat at the table.

My cousin--who's not really a cousin--we just call each other cousin because we're all related somehow through other distant dominican cousins--was outside showing a round 5 or 6 cars that he had just picked up in the Santo Domingo port the day before. he imports around 9 or 10 cars a month, sometimes more.

Anyway, i was doing nothing, so after peeing for what seemed like, maybe 30 minutes or more, I nearly passing out from the ecstasy of extreme bladder relief (EBR)--i walked over and looked at some of the cars he had for sale: he had mini-vans, Honda CRV's, Toyotas, etc. i've seen so many cars pass through his house over the years that, well, i've seen just every make and model over 20 years--including the "Pope Mobil" and "Back to the Future's"--Delorean. Ok, maybe not. I drink a lot.

Anyway, I was looking at a beautiful, nearly new Honda mini-van. it was maybe a year old. it was beautiful and smelled great and it didn't have a dent anywhere. in fact, there was still plastic on the seats. it looked as if it had never never been sat in. it had few miles...did i mention it looked and smelled new?

There were a couple guys looking at the engine bay. you could have eaten off the engine. it was that clean! it was easy to see this was hardly ever driven. the stickers on the radiator and water hoses were as clear and new as they could get. did i mention the engine looked new? Well, it looked new becuase it turned out that it was in fact new. however, after some closer inspection i noticed something odd. i didn't bring it up right there and then because, well, honestly, i kind of forgot about it becuase i was still swimming in the ecstacy of my bladder relief after urinating for 30 minutes.

Then, sometime during the poker game, I turned and asked my cousin--who's not really my cousin--"How much are you asking for the Honda mini-van?" he thought about it and said, "well the blue book value is around $30,000, but in Santo Domingo the same van would cost you "new" $48,000. However, i'm only asking $18,000." I thought to myself, man, thats a very good deal for a fully loaded mini-van, especially one that was only a year old! but then i remembered what i noticed while i was looking inside the engine bay, and said, "Oh yeah, i almost forgot, when i was looking inside the engine bay, i couldn't help but notice that, although the engine was clearly new, the bolts on top of the struts, and the bolts surrounding the engine bay were all very rusty. Why is that? Everyone at the poker table laughed. I laughed with them. I had no idea why? And then he told me something as if it was such common knowledge that i must be an idiot not to know about it..."All those cars out there, Frank, are from the Katrina hurricane that rolled through New Orleans. they were all flooded. We purchase all our cars from car dealers auctions (You must have a dealers license in order purchase vehicles wholesale at dealer's auctions in the USA). Anyway, we clean them up and then send him to different central and south american countries. Although they all had salvage titles when we bought them, once the vehicles enter another country (any central or south american country), a new Matricula (Title) is issued and the original "Salvage Title" is replaced."

Then he proceeded to explained why this is neccessary. "Think about this for a second," he said, "how could I purchase a nearly new mini van for $30,000, then pay to have it transported, then prepped, then pay all of the "Aduana taxes" (Customs taxes) for this country; then pay the "first time registration" taxes (for the license plate) for this country, then pay for the handling and transporting to different dealerships around the island, and then make any kind of profit that would justify the financial investment and logistics involved?

After everything is paid for, the profit margin would be so slim, actually non-existant, that the only way to make it worthwhile is to buy vehicles whole (at a dealer's auction) with either very high mileage (which gets rolled back) or with a salvage title (which gets replaced with a new title)."

Frank