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In 2002, I spec'd and ordered a brand new 2002 C4S in Arctic Silver exterior and Boxster Red interior. I loved that car. I took delivery of the car at my go-to dealership in Houston in July 2002.
On a rainy Saturday morning, at around 11am, in April 2004, I was headed into the office to do some work and hydroplaned on a wet road, spun into the median, and hit a tree at a pretty good speed. Single car accident, thankfully. I did not lose consciousness, but I was transported to the hospital by ambulance. I was lucky and suffered only a concussion. One bystander had witnessed the accident and said she did not expect me to open the door and walk out of that car.
My insurance company declared the car totaled. I eventually got a 2004 C4S, then eventually a 2006 Carrera S. I now recently bought a 2018 Carrera S Cabriolet.
In going through my old things, I found my old window sticker for the car I had crashed. It had a VIN on it. For giggles, I decided to run a Carfax on the car.
What I found astonished me: No mention of any accident in 2004. No mention of the car being totaled. Rather, it was imported to Ontario in September 2004 and was registered there. It is listed as having had only a single accident--a "minor" one in 2018. It is listed as having only a single owner, when clearly that's not the case, as I was the original owner.
Anyway, this is what a car--which Carfax says is a one-owner vehicle that sustained only "minor" damage in a 2018 accident--looked like in 2004:
And here's what the Carfax says about the car now:
It's not perfect only a start. I was a data acquisition manager for the southeast. every year since 2000 its gotten exponentially better with direct feeds from police departments and service shops for reports. Ask me how I know.
A carfax is the first thing to do, the second is a PPI with a paint meter reading and panel inspection. No one can protect you from everything but due dillegence goes a long way on a used car.
Probably why the car was exported to another country. The body shop who did the work didn't report it to Carfax, and bam, a new clean record.
I learned something about Carfax when I started using an independent mechanic. They won't accept any service records from a shop that doesn't enroll in Carfax AND use software Carfax can tie into. My guy uses Quickbooks desktop software, so Carfax said they would not enroll him unless he changed systems. He declined, because Carfax isn't his partner..At the same time, Carfax won't allow the vehicle owner to enter records for service done by a non-participating mechanic shop. So, I now have 3 Porsches for which there will be lengthy service record gaps in the Carfax report.
That's crazy BUT with that said if the dealer/repair shop doesn't subscribe to CarFax then it WILL NOT show up on one. A good friend of mine owns an exotic car repair shop and I asked him about it and he said he's not paying the subscription fee so nothing he does is reported into CarFax.....so I could see where it could get lost.
Carfax reports are like home Covid tests: A positive result (i.e. showing an accident or other major problem) is likely to be accurate, but a negative result (nothing bad on the report) has a very good chance of being wrong! Back in 2005 or so I bought a 1987 928S4 sight unseen on Ebay. Clean Carfax, 2 owners, very good mechanical and cosmetic shape-I loved the car. I had all the seats recovered, had the dash done in leather, powder coated the valve covers, almost everything was refurbished. About 10 years later, I sold it privately ( I had purchased a 2003 996 and didn't have room for both cars). The local buyer paid me up front and we set a date for me to drive it over to him. The day before delivery, he called me up and said that he wished he had a Carfax report before paying me, because he had just ordered one and it showed that the car had been totaled in Massachusetts in 1992! I thought he was scamming me so I ordered my own copy. Sure enough, he was correct. When I compared my original report along side the new one, it was clear that the accident wasn't on the original report. I took it to my mechanic and asked him to look at the frame and while he couldn't give me a definitive answer, he thought that there may have been marks left by a frame straightening device. I checked with the Massachusetts transportation department and was told that all records from that period had been destroyed in a fire or flood a few years before, so they couldn't help me. It took over 15 years for the accident to show up on Carfax's radar. The sale went through, but I gave back a few thousand dollars and felt like an idiot. I still have the nagging feeling that I was screwed somehow!
I purchased a Lexus GX from Texas Auto Direct (purchased by Vroom) back in the day, clean Carfax. Since I knew nothing about TAD and could not go see the car in-person I hired a 3rd party inspector to checkout the car; his report was that it was "as represented". When the car was delivered I knew there was something wrong. I'd never seen a 40K mile car with zero stone chips on the front...
A few years later I went to trade the GX and the dealer showed me the Carfax which now stated that it had been in an accident (run head first into a tree at speed). It was repaired by the Lexus dealer, sold at auction to Texas Auto Direct, and then sold to me. 10 months after the accident the accident was reported to Carfax who footnoted the accident as "reported 10 months later" (paraphrasing). Of course the "Carfax guarantee" had expired...
Takeaways - Carfax is not worth a poop and used auto dealers are the scum of the earth...
So, having read this far is the only answer a thorough PPI, including using a paint thickness gauge? Second question, does Auto Check do any better on their reports than CarFax does?
04-26-2022, 01:11 AM
I knew Carfax was unreliable but holy cow.
