Originally Posted by +fireamx
Every State has it's own laws when it comes to a "Salvage Titled" vehicle.
I'm not knocking ANY of the Sothern States (so all you Southerners don't start jumping on me) but when I was in the car business, it was general knowledge that certain States were notorious for "Washing titles".
If I was to buy one of those cars with a "washed title" and ship the car back to Ohio and sell it to an unsuspecting buyer, he could drive the car for years and never know it was once "Totaled".
But if at some point in time the buyer would do a title history search on said vehicle, and discover that the car (they had been driving for years) was once totaled by an Insurance company. I would be legally responsible to return the buyer all their money back.
I know it doesn't take very much to officially "Total" a Crossfire, sometimes something so minor it would simply be repaired on dozens of other vehicles, but not on our cars.
A salvage title in many cases is nothing more than a Label. The car can still be driven, and operated in a completely safe manor, with no problem what so ever. If there was problem, the State inspectors would never sign off on it to be street worthy. But the car is forever relegated to 3rd. class citizenship, and considered "damaged goods", by any potential future buyer.
Some people wouldn't be caught dead owning one, others have no problem with it at all. But NOBODY would knowingly pay any where close to "book" value for a car that was once considered a salvage vehicle. That is, if they are made aware of that fact, and "washing titles" deprives them of that knowledge.
I'm not saying what you're doing is illegal (obviously in your State it's not) but where I live, washing a title is against the law.
And it's one of the reasons I got out of the car business, since I travelled down South to find clean cars to sell up North.
I think the idea is that one day, even those "salvaged" XF's will be worth something to a collector.
We really don't know if these cars will be worth anything one day, but as someone said earlier just like the old Thunderbirds, they could be. Or even like yoda's story, they may be worth more to the right person. We all know we love this car. There aren't too many of them out there and it's good to see someone saving them from the scrap heap.
It looks like he's doing fantastic work, and if I was in the market for another XF right now I would have to take this one into consideration, pending a personal inspection of course.
It's also great to see that these cars CAN be rebuilt after an accident, if one so chooses. Difficult, but it's still doable.