Date:         Tue, 23 Apr 2002 07:35:40 EDT
Reply-To:     Oxroad@AOL.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jeffrey R <Oxroad@AOL.COM>
Subject:      Carfax when buying Vanagons (little Vanagon content)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

I recently subscribed to Carfax for $19 for two months unlimited use. For
those that don't know, Carfax is an internet site where you can type in a
cars Vehicle Identification Number and get a car history.

Now the history they offer is kind of limited. It tells if the car ever had a
salvage title, or was a fleet vehicle, or was sold at auction. And then it
tells the mileage at different stages when records come up for a transfer of
title or state inspection and the like.

At first I thought the site was kind of bogus. I mean they offer an "up to"
$5000 guarantee that a car has a clean title if they say it has a clean
title. The catch is the fine print says they will give you 10% of the
wholsale value of the vehicle up to $5000. So this isn't a money maker if you
find out the title was not clean. And quite frankly I'm not even sure what a
unclean title is.

BUT, I ran a bunch of reports on different cars, a one-owner Fox I recently
bought, a one-owner Ford Taurus my sister bought in spite of my advice not to
(it's a dog), and a buddy's Chevy he bought from his one-owner aunt. And
everything came up clean so I figured Carfax was worthless. But these were
actually all one-owner cars and we were pretty certain of that to begin with.
So, for example, my buddy's aunt didn't roll back the speedo. So maybe I
called the site bogus too soon.

Then I started to run other friends cars who had bought them used here in
SoCal. And a lot of them came back with evidence the mileage had been rolled
back and some had salvage titles. Some were fleet vehicles. Some sold at
auction. And all these reasons I would have, and they would have, passed on
the cars had they have known.

A bunch of vehicles would show something like 97K miles in 1998 and then would
be retitled in 1999 with 36K showing a "potential rollback" according to
Carfax. And these were cars with a six digit odometer allowing it to show
accurate mileage over 100,000--meaning it didn't "roll over" back to zero and
start again. The information would suggest someone tampered with the odometer
reading. And the information comes up in some cases with mileage every two
years as the car is inspected so you see the progression which seems to
suggest the rollback they've uncovered is actually a roll back rather than an
error in someone punching a number into a computer at the inspection point.
It'll read something like : 1996  36,000 miles, 1998 58,000 miles, 2000
92,000 miles,  2001 55,000 miles.

One car a guy at work bought from a dealer what was an alleged "one owner"
Chevy Blazer with 30K "original miles" where car fax showed it at 85,000 a
few years earlier. Another BMW was Salvaged twice and just kept having lower
and lower mileage records over the years. And the thing is here in SoCal the
amount of use the car has had doesn't necessarily jump out at you on a visual
inspection as the cars don't rust.

Anyway the point is for about $20 it might give piece of mind and might keep
you from buying a car from someone being less than honest.

If you go for it and start running Carfax reports for friends (as you can run
an unlimited number for  the 2 months) I recommend you do it descreetly. I
mean the one guy who is so proud of his 37,000 original mileage Blazer
doesn't really benefit from knowing he got taken by the dealer now that he
owns it. So I kept it to myself. Truth is if the car works fine maybe that's
all that matters once you own it.

Another buddy who wears the fact that he treats his 89 Fox like crap asked me
to run a report for him He has been moping around ever since as he found out
the car he bought in 1999 with 50K original miles seems to have had 97K miles
in 1998. He just keeps saying "I've been living a lie."

So checking out a car you or a friend already own my not be the most fun
thing you could do. But if you're making a purchase it doesn't really hurt to
spend the $20.

I have no financial interest in Carfax, by the way.

Jeff
83.5 Westy 160K clean title
93 Fox  55K clean title