James Bailey

What gets damaged in an engine fire are the electrical cables......and how it gets "fixed" for cheap since a proper repair totalled the car is often cut and splice. However when the wires melt together hot wires ground to all kinds of thing through the other wires and damage can be far away inside a good looking harness. We all know that 928s never have electrical problems so why not add in a whole bunch of butt connectors and wires of various colors just to keep it interesting. Keep in mind that the guy putting together a salvage car is doing so usually to make money by selling it so anything that can be done to cut corners often is. I have seen some really scary stuff like 1/4 of a 928 held on with a limited number of "spot welds" ..... Be real careful unless you see the damage !

Bill Ball

Small engine fire....

James Bailey

No Bill that was a minor interior fire.....

danglerb

+1 what Jim said, until you have owned a car with a "small" fire, you can't imagine what a PITA it can be. I bought an old 914 that had an engine fire with less than 5k from new, quickly put out, and restored by pro mechanic.

Places that never rust, do on a fire damaged car. Splices go bad after 5 or 10 years, or get flakey. Nobody fixes a salvage car like it was a keeper, unless they keep it. Think about it, nice running 928 that will sell at best for thousands under normal market value, who would sell it?

Bill Ball

OK, a more accurate representation. Apologies to Shane.

Nicole

That's the trouble with salvage titles. They devalue good cars to the point where they are repaired in the cheapest way possible - to the point where it might be dangerous.

Rather, they should set-up a way for such cars to lose their registration, and regain it after certain criteria has been met and demonstrated in an inspection.

Think about it: salvage titles are purely based on cost of vehicle versus cost of repair. New cars might have $40k worth of repairs but no salvage title, and nobody verifies that it was done right.

The same car a few years later would be totaled by insurance, and some dedicated collector could restore it to better than new - but it will have the salvage title.

If no insurance was involved, no salvage title, despite the same damage and repair.

It makes no sense to me!

Marine Blue

You're absolutely right Nicole.

Your comment brings up another good point. Just because the car has a clean title and no recorded accident history doesn't mean it hasn't had a major accident. For those of you looking, don't just rely on the carfax etc to determine if the car has had previous damage. This is especially true with high end cars which have had owners that could throw money at repairs without getting insurance involved.

Good luck with the search.

auzivision

The glass maybe half empty or the glass may be half full, but no one will really know for sure unless they inspect the glass in person and find out the true history. Everything else is just pure speculation.

At least at some point someone did an intake job… might be why it caught fire. If it is the burnt car as shown in Bill's post (looks like it might be the same color), I'd be really skeptical about this one.

Landseer

When the story starts with vagueness to enhance value, can one expect it to ever crystallize into open/honest facts? At least in this case somewhere in an insurance company file is some of the answer.

FBIII

I bought a salvage 928 about 25 years ago. Nice car that was stolen, vandalized and partially stripped. Put it back together and it was a very nice car. At that time nothing was required in terms of documentation or close inspection to see if repairs were done correctly. Page forward 20 years and in PA the process to retitle a salvage vehicle is very cumbersome, comprehensive and nit picky. I bought a stolen Range Rover not knowing the change in procedure and had a fun adventure.
On a side note some vehicles get a salvage title if the car is stolen and not recovered in a certain amount of time.

SteveG

I was going to post what FB said and expand: in some states you can clear a salvage title, (at least I was told that in PA) with many pictures and much documentation + receipts, and probably several visits to the DMV. And (AFAIK) in some states you can't. They want it off the public roads or at least permanently labeled.

James Bailey

Many states require a list of all used donor parts AND THE VIN # of the car they came from....WHY? because many cars are "rebuild" with stolen parts sometimes using little more than the vin plate of the original car....Goes back to how do you make money fixing salvage cars , find cheap parts. The fact that people used to go to a lot of trouble washing titles by registering in those states which did not brand titles is but one indication of how much impact "salvage" or " Flood " has on the value of a car.....

Landseer

Computerization of DMV's and tightening down on titles has become a big challenge for the old car retro guys, some of whom have been doing just that, building cars around documents that have VINs.

Mogans

My 89GT had a salvage title at one time, but doesn't anymore. Of course that shows up in the history. The car was in an accident and Lucky Ekman did the work on it. I'm not sure how much that would affect resale value, but it's a beautiful car and you'd never know anything had ever been wrong with it. It's got less than 70K miles on it, no regrets on buying it.