Would you buy a car that has an accident reported via Carfax?

i bought a bentley with a car fax history of body work,it was a small repair,i was able to get a great buy due to the car fax history and did not bother me a bit.on a ferrari it would bother me.

 

Depends on the car and price and situation.

I had an AM Vantage a few years ago. The first night I had it valet'd at a local restaurant. A Porsche parked in front held his clutch a little too long and rolled into the front of my AM. He then drove off. Maybe he noticed, maybe he didn't. The valet's flipped out. Came running inside and told me what happened. I called the cops because I was dumb. I went to sell the car a couple years later and boom..... Ding on the Carfax.

It sold at a discounted price.

 

Absolutely. As long as it was non structural. If you think about it, if you are at a light and someone rolls into you and cracks your rear bumper, or the same if you roll into someone in front of you, the cost of a rear bumper on a 430 is somewhere around $8k or so and the front bumper prob as expensive or more. You have to get a police report and go through insurance as I doubt anyone would want to settle outside of insurance being that it is a Ferrari. So even though the car was in an "accident" and it was reported to CARFAX, it in no way would be an issue with the car other than you have a new, repainted front or rear bumper. And CARFAX isn't always 100%. I bought a 355 that had a clean CARFAX when I bought it only to find out it had a minor parking lot rear bumper accident reported 6 years after the fact. We ran a new CARFAX when I went to sell her and it popped up.
Now if the car was hit from the side, or a major front or rear end collision, that could be an issue with the frame and would probably scare me away. .

 

If you do buy a car with an accident report, just be prepared to deal with it when it comes time to sell. I had the most minor accident ever in my Aston V12V. A kid rolled into me from behind while driving no more than 1 mile per hour (he was on Ambien and couldn't judge the distance). The contact left only a minor scuff mark on my plastic bumper cover but I called the police so that his insurance would pay to remove the mark (stupid!!!). When it came time to sell, most of the dealers would immediately discount their trade-in offers by tens of thousands once they saw the Carfax report. When I explained what happened and showed them pictures of the mark (which was barely even visible), they told me it didn't matter. In the end, reporting the incident probably cost me $10k.

In light of this experience, I will never buy an exotic that has an accident listed on its Carfax and I will really think twice about reporting any accident. In many cases it will be cheaper to just pay for the repairs out of your own pocket.

 

Okay -- I have stone chips on my bumper and front bonnet so I pay a body shop to repaint them.
Alternatively someone backs into me and puts a dent in the hood and the bumper. I get new parts painted and installed.
What is the difference?
You can't tell me that it makes a hill of beans difference to the selling price as long as the damage was documented and you are not trying to cover up a major accident repair -- come on guys.
My documentation showed that the first owner Benny Caiola, had a small dent in the drivers door fixed. So should I have paid $3000 less because of that?
Alan

 

So much isn't going to get documented with these cars.

The PPI should give you an idea about the past life. For example, the undertrays give a pretty good idea what life a car lived on the track and in real life. If they've been beaten to all getout.. its probably been tracked a bit. If cracked, look at the underbody and suspension for hints of past damage. It's all going to be priced in.

If you're not going to ever sell the car it doesn't matter if it has prior work done. Problem arises if you have to sell the car. But I wouldn't buy a car factoring resale personally. If you loose $$$ then its all part of the game.

 

I am on the fence w this as well, there are plenty out there with PERFECT Carfax reports, so to pull the trigger it'd have the be a huge deal$$$ Can you get the full details of the accident? Some are VERY minor, but had to be reported...like a small fender bender in a parking lot.

 

I would, as long as I was able to obtain the repair records and pictures and the car was discounted appropriately.

Just in the past 2 weeks, I was chasing a Murcielago roadster.....that was re-painted to a color I liked. He insisted the car wasn't painted in response to a collision. I told the guy, fine, get me records and a healthy discount and we can close this......never called me back.

And for the guy saying the PPI would reveal all this stuff......in my experience, most guys doing PPIs are mechanics, not body guys, so their knowledge is limited.

 

+1. A minor hit in the rear of our cars will crack the fiberglass bumper and possibly damage the diffuser. Even a tap will crack the fiberglass. As I said before....$7k for the bumper, $3k for the diffuser. Plus the cost to remove old ones, repair and install the new ones. Easily a $15k-$18k repair for the most minor of "accidents". And for you guys thinking that the person who just tapped you in the rear would be willing to settle outside of insurance??? Guess again.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I might buy a non-exotic car that has had an accident on the carfax, provided it was a minor accident that could be verified by documentation somehow. I'd probably hesitate if it were a "high line" car like a BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Audi, etc. There just seem to be many more / other choices out there with clean histories that would be better values for the money.
Would I buy a Ferrari with any sort of dirt on it's carfax? No. Is carfax the gospel? No, but some people treat it as such. To me, there's too much downside risk to outweigh the upshot of a discounted purchase price. Sort of "pay now or pay later" to me. There are too many fish in the sea.

 

No

Unless it was a HUGE discount. As they say, 'Everyone has a price'.

 

It depends on you...

If you are keeping it long term it matters less because so many other things are going to play out for the next buyer of your car, documentation, service, how well you keep up the car, etc
The trouble is that if this car is your first big sports car purchase, as it was for me, you might not be sure that you are going to like it so its hard to tell if you will actually keep it long term. You might get married, kids, new job, car is a lemon, whatever so the issue of resale is important to consider.
As a buyer you try to use this to help with negotiation, but then it's up to you. I would make sure that the car is optioned well and start on the higher end of the spectrum, but another approach would be to feed near the bottom. I think this later group needs to have more cash reserves on hand and/or mechanical abilities and/or high tolerance for risk depending on the condition of the vehicle.

 

As long as it is not structural damage and was repair right. Reselling it later would not be a problem as long as you price it right. And I always say, you buy it cheap, you sell it cheap.

 

While documented minor accidents shouldn't make a hill of beans difference, the reality is that they really do. Again, most of the dealers I spoke to when I was shopping for my scud immediately dramatically reduced their trade-in offers on my Aston once saw/heard that there was a Carfax report. It didn't matter to them how minor the accident or the damage was. This greatly reduced the pool of dealers with which I could transact without getting eviscerated on the trade-in. Fortunately, I found one dealer (FCI) who was willing to overlook the accident report based upon how minor the accident/damage was.

Make no mistake, you do yourself no favor in buying a car with an "unclean" Carfax report. I suppose it's okay if you buy the car at a big enough discount as to offset the future discounted trade-in value. Also, an unclean Carfax report may be less of an issue on an older car (my Aston was a 2011) in which case some form of damage is more expected.