I have seen a salvage and a rebuilt title xkr for sale. Are these even worth looking at? Some say there was little damage and was fixed with "genuine" jag parts. Other says someone hit the car from the rear but was fixed with no problem. First explain to me the difference between the two and second what about registering the title. Or do I just keep looking. I found two pristine 2013-2014 xkrs for sale but missed them. One owner, no accidents, perfect cars. I live in Houston and one was in Mass. Long flight to look at a car then have it shipped back home. I appreciate all of your answers. Thanks


JDog

 

No.

 

A simple google search will tell you that a rebuilt title is a car that formally had a salvage title and was rebuilt to be road worthy. As to whether you should buy one, that's on you to decide. If a car has a rebuilt title, you would want to see the before pics and the repair bills at a minimum. If it was a flood car, a hard pass would be in order as our vehicles are heavily electronic.

Also, it will be a rebuilt title forever, so think about resale. If you're doing it just to save a few grand up front but can't repair your own cars, then you should think long and hard.

 

Resale and repair quality is the biggest concern.

I have had friends buy salvage cars and use then for 2-3 years then try to resale and are horrified when they realize it is worth next to nothing. Conversely, I have had friends buy flood cars (Not as complex as ours necessarily) and use them for 12 years and 150K miles and genuinely don't care what the resale on them is, so it works out great for them.

If you can turn your own wrench, plan on never needing to get rid of it, and the receipts and repairs are all in order, then it might be a good find. Otherwise, best to avoid

 

Keep in mind that regulations vary state to state.
Your question has at least fifty different potential answers without getting into any specifics of the car in question.
There is too much varability for any short answers.
There are cars out there that should not have a clear title yet do.

Personally if it were the right color combination and local I'd at least check one out.

 

Short Answer: Don't Bother.

I've had a few cars with rebuilt or salvage titles. They are worth between 50 and 70 percent of a clean titled car. However they are harder to sell. Some people straight up will not buy or even consider your car.

The dirty titled cars I've owned were cars worth between 500 and 2000 dollars, so it was mostly a minor issue, but it still was impractical.

So long answer? Don't bother.

 

Do you know what a salvage title means? It's when the insurance company declares a vehicle to be a total loss because the cost to properly repair it exceeds what that car would be worth after it's fixed. Insurance companies are pros who do this every day, as are the Midnight Garage shops that buy those wrecks for cheap at auction to fix them up fast and flip them for a quick profit to unsuspecting buyers. It's like putting lipstick on a pig. Now that's fine if you know that you're buying a pig; it's your money and your choice. But if you don't know anything about pigs, you can be up to your eyeballs in pig poop before you know it. Do you want to buy a pig in a poke?

If a deal seems too good to be true, it is. Remember that you can't tell a book by its cover.

It's one thing to rebuild a 1957 Chevy, that's a piece of cake. But a Jaguar X150 is in a whole different universe. The X150 is virtually all aluminum, and it takes special equipment and knowledge to properly do chassis and body repairs. But that's just the tip of the iceberg compared to all of the computers and electronic control modules and special wiring harnesses that tie everything together so they can communicate with each other. Needless to say, those electronic components are expensive. Oh, you say that's no problem because the dealer swore on a stack of Bibles that everything works? Well, maybe it does ... for now, but what about 3 months or a year later, when the moisture that's been sitting inside those wires, electrical connectors, and modules have had enough time to corrode and zap those components. Is that a risk that you want to take?

The dealer will tell you that the damage was minor. If that was true, the insurance company would have paid to fix it.

BUYER BEWARE! Unless you're competent and have the necessary equipment to do Jaguar X150 repairs yourself, I strongly recommend that you pass on this salvage title car and keep looking for a better one. You don't need the aggravation lurking in a salvage title car. It's likely to cost you more in the long run.

Just my .

 

Queen and Country has gone missing, but he'd have a counter argument that the insurance company totalled the car as it absolves them of risk down the road.
The car could still be fixable but the insurance company doesn't want to play with the risk of future related complications.
Owners also might want to push towards the totalled direction as they might not want to own a car with accident history.
Both sides have reasons to push that direction even if the face value number of repair estimate and car value do not match.
A lot is dependent on your risk tolerance, skill, intended use of life, and if the car has certain rare combinations of options that make it more desirable to you personally.

Even clean titled cars might have had games played where with a different jurisdiction presiding and honesty involved they would should be bearing a rebuilt title.

 

Before selling rebuilt salvage cars, the salesman was an honest politician.

 

Thanks everyone for all your help. This is exactly what I thought but I wanted to be sure. I am old and don't have much patience but I think I will wait.


Thanks

JDog

 

Looks like you've come the the same conclusion as the majority.

There's been discussion of the definition of salvage title, opinions on immediate risk and future re-sale value. Exactly the same factors apply to us in the UK as do in the USA and such vehicles are permanently recorded on the registration documents with the repair category.

Insurers are more likely to write off and X150 and other recent Jaguars with aluminium bodies simply because JLR restrict availability of body parts and the shops that are authorised and approved to work on them. For this reason the accident damaged vehicles are usually more valuable for parts than spending large sums on repairs. To an insurer, this minimises their liability and is a quick resolution to a claim.





A used Jaguar is always a bit of a gamble. One owner vehicles in good condition and backed up with detailed history are worth the search, time and extra cost.

Graham

 

Great advice above!

Also be aware:
- Generally difficult/impossible to get comprehensive insurance (though liability-only coverage generally available through some carriers)
- Ditto bank financing (so, plan on a cash purchase)
- Difficulty registering in some states; additional inspections, etc (eg, NY)
- Generally, factory dealer service difficult/impossible to obtain (varies by state and dealer; independent shops generally OK)
- Generally not eligible for aftermarket warranty coverage
- Generally, not qualified as a trade in vehicle
- Generally, exempt from state "30 day" and "lemon" laws

These vehicles were written off as scrap by insurance companies for very good reasons. Resellers know this; generally, their margin is buyer ignorance. Smart cash buyers, able to do their own due diligence, sometimes roll the dice, but generally on cheap cars with little residual value

 

Thanks so much for all your help.


Jdog

 

I generally agree with all the other guys, and personally would not touch an insurance write-off. BUT ... I have direct (UK) experience of a written-off car. My wife's father bought a 2006 Porsche Boxster for very little money as it was an insurance write-off. But get this - the reason it was written off was because it had been broken into and the radio/ICE head unit stolen, causing some damage to the dash and the passenger door in the process. The insurers decided this made the car 'beyond economic repair', presumably because the head unit and the dash are expensive items to replace and possibly with high labour costs at an official Porsche Centre (which is what the insurers based the cost on). As others have said, the insurers want a quick and clean exit from the case. The owner did a deal with the insurer, bought the car back and then repaired it (very well) himself and drove the car for another period (I think 2 years) before finally selling it on.

Now clearly, this sort of damage does not affect the driveability of the car, although it does affect the resale value, which in this case worked to my FIL's benefit. He acquired a very nice Boxster for a silly price. He still has the car some 3 years later and is still happy with it. I personally advised him against buying it and would not have bought it myself (due to the difficulty in selling it later on). I should add that the local, very highly regarded Porsche Indie did a thorough inspection of the car (after my FIL had bought it, in a classic stable door closing manoeuvre) and gave it a 100% clean bill of health.

So, there may be some cases where buying such a car is OK. But, as the other guys (and also 80sRule ) have said - you need to be incredibly circumspect, do all your homework, assume everyone involved is a liar and a charlatan and be aware of what the consequences down the line are.

 

My general advice is this:

If you do NOT work on EVERYTHING yourself, you need to minimize risk. If I buy a sketch car, I buy it eyes wide open and figuring worst case scenarios. I bought my 2005 Nissan Maxima SL 2 years ago for $2000; clean title but needed quite a bit of mechanical and hidden work. It needed front suspension, brakes all around, a good bit of floor pan (theres a low spot, and combined with jammed sunroof drains, it completely rotted the same spot on both sides), and minor cosmetic rust on one rear wheel arch. I did it up extremely nice and had just under $3k in it, and my mom drove it two years, and I just sold it yesterday for $4700. I bought it knowing that I *could* need to do serious motor work, serious transmission work, and that I was buying a car that was firmly in the needs immediate repair category. I've had times that my luck was less there and I put a crap load of time into the car to break even; which was not a loss in raw dollars simply by planning for the worst.

I mention this because the risk is minimal on many every day cars due to cheap parts. This is NOT the case on vehicles like the X150; a cracked headlight is $120 for a pair of new ones for the Nissan, a single active headlight on these XKs is 500-750 used EACH. A full suspension and brake system rebuild that was 300$ on the Nissan with RockAuto parts would be 700-2000$ on the XKR depending on the brake option it was equipped with. This is ignoring labor!

Buy the best car you can afford. Buy a "no-excuse" car. The savings is NOT there on these with getting somebody else's problems. Buy a lesser spec if it comes to it, a sorted 4.2L XK is better than a knackered 5L XKR.

 

So I have some great relevant experience to this as I worked in the collision repair industry for many years, both as an insurance appraiser and as a repair technician (And i have rebuilt a car or two). With that said I think you can find a wide range of cars available for sale with a rebuilt title. There are absolutely hacked together examples that I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. There are also some that really didn't suffer much damage but due to circumstances were totalled out by insurance. Keep in mind every state has different laws as to how to calculate for a total loss which is why you will see many conflicting opinions and facts. Where I practiced it was dollar for dollar - if it was cheaper to fix the car it would be fixed, if it was more expensive to fix it would be totalled. HOWEVER, one thing of note was in our total loss calculations we took the salvage value of the vehicle as part of the equation. I'll use round numbers here for the sake of explanation but: if I was to total out a car and had to pay the owner 100k for the cost of their car, i could look up at salvage auction and expect to get say 25k for the salvage value. That would mean if the repair bill was OVER $75k then the car would be deemed a total loss. If UNDER $75k it would be fixed. Again, there were a few other parts at play here but this was how it was calculated in my state.

There were few exceptions to this rule, one being depending upon say the shop the car was sitting at (perhaps they had a way of tacking on extra charges, being really slow, or the likelihood of additional damage being found). Occasionally we would be able to get exceptions but trust me when I say it was rare and had to go WAY up the food chain if the car was worth anything of value. Other exceptions could be a car was stolen and found after say 30 days and the claim was already paid out.

With all of that said you will see nearly every single seller of a rebuilt title car claim it was just minor damage, or just the bumper replaced, or whatever. Now i will say it is possible to find a car that is easily fixable and sometimes for very little money, but unless you have documented photos and proof of it I wouldn't really believe it. Definitely if you are looking at one seriously get a PPI, and do a lot of looking in every corner. One thing to remember is most of the time these cars are sold at auction and the buyer doesn't necessarily see what all was on the insurance estimate, their only goal is to fix the car to get it to look and drive ok. So one way to save money is maybe leaving some damage that an insurance company would be obligated to fix. Now its possible that damage might just be cosmetic, or it could be structural. (I have encountered both). A funny car that comes to mind to me is the Lotus Elise, as you are likely to see an article about one totalled over a small crack in the body. On that car you literally have to replace the whole body for something small like that which is very expensive to do so. Now an insurance company would have to do that, wheras you, I, Joe Schmo could just repair a crack or section and honestly the repair could hold up just fine and be impossible to see unless maybe you looked at the backside of the panel. That is where a rebuilt title could save you a ton of money on an otherwise fine car. Insurance also has to deal with parts, and on cars like these that are very pricy one of us could browse the parting out section here and get parts fairly cheap by perspective. However the insurance company would be limited to traditional supply channels such as the dealer, LKQ suppliers and salvage yards. And to be honest salvage yards really exist now for insurance companies so while they will save money those parts are still expensive (and require reconditioning still).

TL;DR: Get a pre-purchase inspection (as you should with any purchase), it is possible to find a unicorn but also possible and in my opinion more likely to find an absolute basket-case and headache of a car.

 

Life is short. Why waste time and invite aggravation? If you're considering a salvage title X150 because it's "affordable", you're probably fooling yourself. Inside that beautiful body is a money pit.

That reminds me of the story of the traveling salesman and the farmer with three daughters. He was so eager to get them married off that he offered to pay the salesman $1,000 to take the one of his choice. He couldn't believe it because they were all so perfect! He couldn't decide which one to choose as his bride, so he looked them over carefully. He noticed that the first, a beautiful redhead, was just a little bit knock-kneed. The second, a gorgeous brunette, was just a little bit cross-eyed. But the third, a ravishing blonde, was absolutely stunning and flawless.

After the wedding, she told him that she was just a little bit pregnant!

Turns out it was a great deal that really wasn't worth it, even though he got more than he bargained for!

 

If you can’t afford a good one, you really can’t afford a bad one!

 

Exactly!

 

Amen!


Jdog