Ah, I see what you are saying now. I just noticed it said "engine removed for repair" in October of '06, two months after taking delivery of the vehicle...

Not sure what that means... I guess I'll call the dealership who did the work tomorrow to find out what happened.

I wonder if it means they actually replaced the engine or they just pulled the engine to do some work?

Thanks Buckwheat for noticing that.

 

I'm late to the party. I agree with Buckwheat (this one time ) .

 

Let this one pass... What are they asking that makes it so enticing? $40K?

 

O'tay...made my day!

 

Well, if it is on carfax record - it was not cosmetic, believe me. My car had cosmetic bump into right door and seller disclosed it and provided proof or work done to the door - patched scratch and repaint at dealership - and my carfax is completely clean.
to get something into carfax record car had to be damaged.

 

Actually thats not correct.

Carfax gets most of its info directly from police reports...searching for vin numbers.

You can have cars at the scene of an accident where the car in question has just been tapped or barely touched in the fender and it will show up as an accident on the carfax if the vin number is included in the police report.

I know from experience this is true. And you can save big money if you dig deep enough.

Carfax also will miss any damage when somone takes a damaged car to a friends bodyshop and pays cash.

Carfax is a tool but probable less valauble than a good paint meter. Ever notice how a smart dealer/buyer with a carfax in front of them will always run out and test a trade-in with a paint meter before they even mention a value.

 

If the car is the one that is at the elite place listed above...and I'm not sure it is indeed that one... there are two large question marks on the carfax that you cannot miss. Not deal breakers but they warrant further investigation.

I rather not say anymore since I am using my account to provide you with info.

good luck

 

sounds like xbox already bought the car anyway...

 

More logical place would be insurance claims which are definitely stored in databases and cataloged, actually, rather than raw police reports which are not even in any global database.
Even if it is true perhaps about police reports I understand police reports are not the only sources anyway.

On my car first owner called police and filed insurance to cover paint job, still, carfax is clean as it was a minor cosmetic thing.

 

Was there a police report?

Also..

Insurance claims are private...police records are not.

Other sources MV deprts, and what service stations and body shops decide to report.

CF is a good place to look but you need to dig in deeper if anythng comes up.

 

No clue, I did not ask that much. Car was scratched at mall parking lot, someone rear ended into right door and left a scratch. So, there was police and report.

I am not sure if those little pieces of paper police officer writes at the scene on minor accident make their way anywhere at all, but who know, may be I`m mistaken. I just do not see this Boston cop sitting for 2-3 hours after his shift entering all this stuff into some web site that carfax can hit online. Or do they really? I pity them then.

 

Allow me to chime in on what happened and why I missed the Carfax oddities.

I made the first call to Elite yesterday morning and after discussing a few things on the car, I asked them to send me the Carfax report. When the report arrived in the email, there was one item that was circled, "Accident Reported". Like Buckwheat said, I wanted to do my due diligence to find out what exactly that means, and after looking at the dealership that serviced the cars before and after the accident, I speculated the owner also took the car to the same dealership for that accident as well, so I made the call to that particular dealership. I explained my intention of trying to get more information on a car that I was interested in and the service adviser was more than helpful. He gave me some maintenance record and told me what they did around the time of the accident. He said they had t reshoot the bumper due to a pure cosmetic issue. I asked whether any mechanical work was done during that time, he said no, and they even reused the same panel because it was so minor. I figure what was good enough, so I called Elite back and said I would take the car.

What was interesting is once I posted the questions and saw Buckwheat's warning about the report, I got suspicious and went back to exam the Carfax report more closely. I then found out the report they gave me was actually incomplete, it was missing Page 2, and I had missed that because I had focused on the "Accident" part. Once I saw that, I pulled my own report and then saw two other glaring issues on the car, it listed "possible odometer rollback" and "engine removed for repair" on there. I could try to explain each one of them to myself, and was going to call the dealership again to check why the engine was removed, but I figure at this point, there is simply too much oddities with the car that I am going to pass.

 

I had a different experience, and falls more inline with what Buckwheat said. It's purely based on whether the police was involved or not. A frirend was involved in a 3-car domino accident and even though it caused a good amount of damage to the second car, it merely dented the bumper of the 3rd car but because police was there, it now has a "Accident Reported" on the Carfax...

 

They were asking for $49k, and I got them down to $47.5k. For a '06 C4S with only 13k miles, I thought that's a killer deal. I've been looking at a lot of 997s recently, I would assme that car would easily fetch $55k+ if not more. Oh, well, too good to be true.

 

I was finalizing it, just need to send the purchase agreement over in the morning, but I guess I won't be following through on that...

Back to square one...