Re: Carfax, Buying Used, & Craigslist.org

In article <iSQ7k.1145$oY2.648@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, 
honda.lioness@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 says...

> I finally got serious about looking for a second Honda 
> Civic, c. 1989-1997. A few observations:
> 
> -- A friend of mine convinced me Carfax was worth $35 for 30 
> days, unlimited checks. For the four cars I checked, it 
> revealed: (a)
> Odometer tampering with two, with the advertised mileage 
> being over 100k lower than the Carfax title re****ted 
> mileage; (b) lying about the number of owners for a third; 
> it had had four owners in 18 months. Many re****ts attest to 
> how Carfax is not perfect, but so far it sure saved me some 
> trouble.

[...]

> Though oddly, on my Carfax checks, there's always an 
> advertisement by dealers for a 199- Civic, complete with 
> VIN. Then I call the dealer, and the car is not there. Maybe 
> when a car is traded in, carfax automatically retrieves it 
> and its filter puts the ad up? But in fact most of these 
> cars are sold at auction? 

I've found Carfax to be quite useful on several occasions in the past. 
The $35 30-day member****p is cheap compared to the cost of a car, and 
the Carfax data isn't always 100% accurate or complete, but as long as 
you recognize that, it works pretty well for a quick-and-dirty 
*****sment of past problems.

One of those Carfax dealer ads is how I recently acquired my '00 Civic 
Si. I'd been looking for a clean, unmolested '99-'00 Si for a couple of 
months with limited results - most of the ones I ran across via 
Craigslist or another local forum were either ragged out from rough 
treatment, had high mileage with no way to verify the service history 
(or lack thereof), or had modifications I wasn't thrilled about. I'm not 
entirely averse to modded cars when they're well thought out and done to 
a professional standard, but those kinds of cars tend to be the 
exception rather than the rule. 

Anyway, I was checking the VIN on Carfax for an Si I was considering 
going to check out, when an ad popped up stating something like "you 
might also be interested in this vehicle" for an '00 Civic Si with only 
53K miles. It was at a local dealer, so I got on the phone and called 
them immediately. The salesdroid sounded confused initially when I asked 
about the car, then after looking it up, hesitantly offered that they 
still had the car. I went out to look at it, and it turned out that 
they'd just gotten it as a trade-in a couple of days previously. It was 
still in the service bay awaiting cleanup and servicing, was filthy 
inside and out, and they wouldn't let me drive it until they'd checked 
it out. But it appeared to be solid, no evidence of ever having been 
wrecked (confirmed by Carfax, for what that's worth), and the interior 
was in really good shape for an 8-year-old car. It cleaned up quite 
nicely, and I wound up buying it before it ever hit the lot. The only 
flaw I've been able to find is that 5th gear grinds slightly. There's a 
TSB for this which recommends replacing the 5th-reverse gear cluster 
(and probably the synchros), but given how much that's likely to cost, 
I'll probably just live with it unless it gets worse. 

Anyway, your supposition about Carfax automatically finding cars like 
this is probably correct - it certainly hadn't been advertised anywhere 
by the dealer, and the various salespeople I talked to were all 
mystified as to how I'd found out about it. This particular dealer 
claimed that their policy was to never buy cars at auction, but they 
didn't say whether that policy also extended to selling cars at auction. 

Dave