Car Buying Advice

• How to spot a lemon
• Inspecting a used car
• Beware of flood cars
• The problem of rebuilt wrecks

Beware the flood of flood cars

Flood damage may be hard to spot, but it can permeate the vehicle and cause ongoing problems for the rest of the car's service life. Flood damage can ruin electronics, contaminate lubricants, and threaten mechanical systems, often without leaving outward signs. It can take months for incipient corrosion to find its way to the car's computer systems or air-bag controllers.

A new federally sponsored car-tracking database, or "wreck registry," might help consumers avoid these damaged vehicles. The National Motor Vehicle Title Information System (NMVTIS) will help consumers run background checks. It aims to crack down on the practice of "title washing," where cars that have been totaled (or stolen) can get clean new titles in states with lax regulations.

When an insurance company decides a flood-damaged car is totaled, that information should be clear to any future buyer. Too often it isn't. Once a car is totaled, it's supposed to get a new title, called a salvage title. Those titles are usually either plainly marked ("branded" is the term used) with the word "salvage" or "flood." In some states the warning is an obscure coded letter or number. Totaled cars are typically sold at a salvage auction to junkyards and vehicle rebuilders. Reselling is legal, as long as the flood damage is disclosed to buyers on the title, say experts at CarFax.com, a Web site that tracks vehicle histories and sells reports to consumers online.

But as Consumer Reports found in an investigation of "rebuilt wrecks" some flood-damaged vehicles magically reappear with clean titles. Be especially wary of any used car whose title has been "lost."

For now, the NMVTIS is a work in progress. It will eventually gather information from every auto insurer, state motor vehicle department, and junk or salvage yard, but so far only 13 states are fully complying, 14 are providing some data, 14 more are not participating, and 10 are moving toward compliance.

There have long been services that help consumers check a vehicle's history by using its unique VIN number. The biggest are CarFax and Experian's AutoCheck. CarFax charges $29.99 to check out one car, and Experian charges $14.99. Carfax says that it gathers information from police agencies among other public-records sources, which may be one reason it's costlier than other information sources.

The NMVTIS Web site lists two information providers, Auto Data Direct, which charges $2.50 to run down information, and CARCO Group, Inc, which charges $2.25 for a summary and $3.50 for a more complete report. You don't have to pay anything. You can also get a free VIN check from the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

Note: Vehicle-history reports are NOT all-inclusive and are no guarantee that a vehicle is problem free. That's why it is important to have any used car inspected by a trusted independent mechanic before you buy it.

How to spot a flood-damaged car

Here are some quick checks that you can perform yourself:

• Look under the carpets to see if they are wet, damp, or muddy.
  
  
• Check the seat-mounting screws to see if there is any evidence that they have been removed. To dry the carpets, the seats must be removed—not generally a part of normal maintenance.
  
  
• Inspect the lights. Lights are expensive to replace, and a water line may still show on the lens or the reflector.
  
  
• Inspect the car in difficult-to-clean places, such as the gaps between panels in the trunk and under the hood. Water-borne mud and debris may still cling in these places.
  
  
• Look for mud or debris on the bottom edges of brackets or panels where it couldn't naturally settle from the air.
  
  
• Look at the heads of any unpainted, exposed screws under the dashboard. Any unpainted metal in cars flooded in New Orleans will probably already show signs of rust.
  
  
• Check the rubber drain plugs under the car and on the bottoms of doors. If they look as if they have been removed recently, it might have been done to drain floodwater.
  
  
• If you need to dig deeper, remove a door panel to see if there is a water mark on the inside of it. If you are from an area impacted by a flood and have a car that was not damaged, be aware that buyers may still suspect that it was. Consider having a mechanic inspect the car before you sell it so that you can present potential buyers with a clean bill of health.