I live in the People's Republic of California. I have come across a few bricks with "salvaged titles." The People's DMV is not helpful with information about resale values. Can anyone tell me how much a salvaged title reduces the value of a brick? Does the car insurance change for a salvaged title?

There are many opinions on buying salvage cars. Hopefully Chris will do a posting on the topic, as he is very knowledgeable in that arena.

As for your insurance question, laws and rules differ in different states and across insurance companies; check with your agent before you buy the car. The only experience I have with this is when I "totaled" a 740 by sliding on ice into a brick mailbox in my neighborhood. The damage was such that my insurance company presented me with three options, as follows. 1) total the car and be paid FMV. 2) Once the car was totaled, I could have bought it back from the company for a hundred bucks, and then I could fix it as a salvage vehicle. In this case, I would have been able to get libility coverage on the car, but would be ineligible for full coverage regardless of how well I did the repairs. 3) I would receive less money than #'s 1 or 2, but I could do the repairs and not then have a "salvage vehicle." I chose #3, so now four years later, the car looks good and would be much easier to sell than if it had the salvage title --though the repairs would be identical. I was lucky in being able to make the choice; a little more damage and I would have had to go with a full total. Again, I still could have bought the car from the company and done the repairs, but my options in terms of insurance and resale would have been limited. Hope that helps.

...or you could ask me, since I've been involved with cars like this for a long time. And have been directly involved in the reconstruction (or whatever) of a lot of branded-title cars. There are a lot of variables involved but you need to understand a lot about cars like that before you can make an educated decision.

I've posted and posted about this on this board, but nothing has ever stuck here for whatever reason. My posts have been factual and informative, not opinionated or nonfactual. Occasional rants noted. Maybe I need to put together some information about this with a separate website. I'm kind of exhausted with re-posting it hree. You have to be careful because there are a lot of people who know absolutely nothing about any title issues, reconstruction, damage types, title types, what CAUSES a title to be branded, or any other piece of information that has to do with the whole picture.

I'm leaving for lunch. IF you'd like more information, I'll be happy to help out later on. Factually.
--
Chris Herbst, in Wisconsin.

Great idea: if you did a writeup, perhaps we could link it to the FAQ.

A salvage title reduces both market price and marketability significantly. While the repair work may have been done well, it still poses a risk for any buyer who may be forced to do major frame or driveline work. In Iowa, we have "repair" titles in which cars have experienced over 10% of their FMV in body work repair, and "flood" titles for flooded cars. The worst is of course a flood title since electrical and engine problems are almost guaranteed. The best source of information about the reduction in value would be some local used car guys as well as body shops, since they deal in these all the time.