Buying a Damaged Exotic Car: A Guide to Making Informed Purchases

It's a common misconception that exotic cars are immune to damage, but the reality is that they can just as easily suffer from accidents and other forms of damage. When it comes to buying a damaged exotic car, it's essential to approach the situation with caution and do your homework. As someone who has recently purchased an NSX with frame damage, I can attest to the importance of being informed and aware of the potential pitfalls.

In fact, many exotic cars that end up on the market have been salvaged due to the high cost of repairs, particularly when it comes to parts. For example, a SLR McLaren that was damaged in an accident ended up totaling out the car, with repair costs exceeding $450,000. This highlights the importance of understanding the value of your exotic car and being aware of any potential damage or issues before making a purchase.

One of the biggest challenges when buying a damaged exotic car is dealing with shady dealerships that try to pass off damaged vehicles as pristine ones. Odometer roll backs, flood repairs, and damage salvage titles are all common practices in the used car industry, and they can result in buyers ending up with cars that have hidden problems. It's essential to trust your instincts and not be afraid to walk away from a deal if something feels off.

Fortunately, there are steps being taken to improve the transparency of the exotic car market. Vin Wicky, a well-known enthusiast and collector, has been working on developing a system that allows buyers to verify the history of their car, including any potential damage or issues. This is a promising development, as it could help to build trust between buyers and sellers in the industry.

In addition to verifying the history of your exotic car, there are several other things you can do to ensure that you're making an informed purchase. First and foremost, always do your research on the car's value and compare prices with similar models. It's also essential to inspect the vehicle thoroughly and look for any signs of damage or wear.

One way to get a better sense of a car's history is to use services like CARFAX and AutoCheck. These services provide detailed reports on the car's ownership history, accidents, and other potential issues. However, it's essential to remember that these services may not always catch everything, and it's still possible for buyers to end up with damaged or problematic vehicles.

When buying a used exotic car, it's also important to keep an eye out for potential scams. Some dealerships may try to lowball you on the price of the car in order to make a profit, while others may try to hide any damage or issues that the car has suffered. In some cases, buyers may even be asked to pay for repairs or maintenance upfront, which can be a major red flag.

To avoid falling victim to these tactics, it's essential to stay vigilant and do your due diligence. This includes getting a pre-purchase inspection done on the vehicle, checking the title and any salvage history, and researching the car's value using reputable pricing guides. By taking the time to educate yourself and be prepared, you can make an informed decision when buying a damaged exotic car.

Ultimately, the key to making an informed purchase is to approach the process with caution and do your homework. Don't be afraid to walk away from a deal if something feels off, and always prioritize transparency and honesty in the used car industry. With a little knowledge and preparation, you can find yourself driving a stunning exotic car at a fraction of the cost of a similar model.

The Future of Exotic Car Sales

As the demand for exotic cars continues to grow, it's likely that we'll see more innovative solutions emerge in the market. One such example is Vin Wicky's attempt to create a subscription-based service that allows buyers to verify the history of their car. This could be a game-changer for the industry, providing buyers with a new level of transparency and trust.

Another promising development is the rise of online marketplaces and platforms that cater specifically to exotic car enthusiasts. These websites and apps provide a valuable resource for buyers looking to purchase or sell high-end vehicles, often featuring detailed descriptions, photos, and reviews from other owners and experts.

One such platform is Vin Wicky's own website, which allows users to search for and buy exotic cars from reputable dealerships and private sellers. The site also features a range of tools and resources to help buyers research and verify the history of their potential purchases.

While these solutions are promising, it's essential to remember that the used car industry is often shrouded in secrecy and deception. Even with the best intentions and technologies, there will always be scammers and unscrupulous dealerships trying to take advantage of buyers.

As such, it's more important than ever to stay vigilant and do your due diligence when buying an exotic car. By taking the time to research, inspect, and verify the vehicle, you can make an informed decision that protects your interests and ensures a positive experience.

The Importance of Research

When buying a damaged exotic car, it's essential to conduct thorough research on the vehicle's value and history. This includes gathering information from reputable sources such as pricing guides, industry reports, and online reviews.

One of the most comprehensive resources available is the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) pricing guide. This guide provides detailed valuations for new and used vehicles across a range of models and trim levels, including exotic cars.

Another valuable resource is the Hagerty Price Guide, which offers detailed valuations for classic and collectible vehicles, including many exotic car models.

By researching the value and history of your potential purchase, you can make an informed decision that ensures you're getting a fair deal. Remember to always be cautious of prices that seem too good to be true, and don't hesitate to walk away if something feels off.

Inspection and Verification

When buying a used exotic car, it's essential to inspect the vehicle thoroughly before making a purchase. This includes checking for any signs of damage or wear, as well as researching the vehicle's history using reputable services like CARFAX and AutoCheck.

One of the most important things you can do is take a close look at the car's exterior and interior, looking for any signs of damage or neglect. Check the paintwork, trim, and glass for any chips or cracks, and inspect the upholstery and carpets for wear and tear.

It's also essential to research the vehicle's maintenance history, including any records of repairs or maintenance work. This can give you a better understanding of the car's overall condition and help you identify any potential issues.

In addition to researching the vehicle's history and inspecting its condition, it's also important to verify the authenticity of your purchase. Make sure you have all documentation and paperwork in order, including any receipts or records of maintenance work.

By taking the time to research, inspect, and verify your exotic car purchase, you can make an informed decision that protects your interests and ensures a positive experience.

Conclusion

Buying a damaged exotic car requires careful consideration and attention to detail. By doing your homework, researching the vehicle's value and history, and verifying its authenticity, you can make an informed decision that protects your interests and ensures a positive experience.

Remember to stay vigilant and don't be afraid to walk away from a deal if something feels off. With a little knowledge and preparation, you can find yourself driving a stunning exotic car at a fraction of the cost of a similar model.

As the demand for exotic cars continues to grow, it's likely that we'll see more innovative solutions emerge in the market. By staying informed and prepared, you can navigate the used car industry with confidence and make smart, informed decisions when buying your next exotic vehicle.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eneverybody robbed Freddie here back from 8003 the adventure drive trip just concluded I hope you enjoyed watching all the bull run videos it was my first time driving west across the country so it was my first time seeing all of that and I hope you enjoyed the journey today I'm going to talk about rebuilt and salvage title cars nobody wants the car damaged nobody really wants to own a previously damaged car why I don't know I understand people have a little bit more sentimental value towards cars than I do but that's their prerogative now when somebody's car gets damaged the thing that they want to do especially when insurance is insurance is involved they love to snail the screws on they want the most expensive rental car they can get they want the repairs everything's got to be factory factory factory they want that estimate as high as possible so they can try to work out a deal with the body shop whatever it's a game that's been taking place for many generations the insurance companies are aware of it it's just not worth the headache of them fighting it but that causes a lot of cars to get totaled out that shouldn't be totaled out I had a rental car which a for a 458 was a 2013 2014 whatever it is that car went out it had frame damage on it but it was just a little structural not even a structural piece it was a structural piece to keep the the front bumper flush it wasn't a performance structural piece or a part of the frame that actually affected performance it was just all for the cosmetic look of the fender lining up that car technically has frame damage and I guarantee somebody bought it try to ship it through Florida or something like that fix it for $5,000 and sell it as a non frame damaged car that's just what happened but if you look at the video of the car here this is the major impact here which is the the wheel needs obviously clearly in a wheel it's cracked but even this fender and light and everything like that it's not that far off it looks like it was pushed a little bit and I think on the short term what we're ordering parts we can re-secure readjust and re-secure this back to the car at least attempt to the only thing that's preventing us from writing this is the wheel and then the airbag has to be replaced in this door which I don't know if it's a custom ordered from the factory with the leather um better than that the car itself scrape it right there the rest of the car is good that's uh there's no reason that that car should be listed as a frame damage car it's a stupid little cosmetic piece that car sold for about seventy thousand dollars less than what it was worth and I guarantee somebody was able to fix that car for five or six thousand dollars end of story and that's a great buy for somebody somebody is now driving a car which is just as good even if the title is branded as a frame damage car that car is as good as any other 458 on the road for a fraction of the cost and somebody should drive that to the wheels fall off this car here I'm standing next to my NSX this is also a rebuilt title car and it's my first time buying a rebuild title car but I'm a very rational person I can look at something and say okay let me look and if you have a documented repair history or a documented repair in a car nothing really to worry about like I'm more concerned about like if a frame is twisted if it went to a pole sideways something like that would really be like no thanks I like to drive fast I want the car to drive straight and performance wise I want it to be a hundred percent on par with anything else this car there's a guy Mac ninja on NSX forums all he does is rebuild NSX is this is one of the cars he rebuilt I saw step-by-step everything that happened there was uh the back end was whacked in the back corner and a little bit in the front corner but I saw every single piece that went on I saw the repair process and normally I wouldn't buy a salvage car just for my own personal whatever but but this car I was specifically when I was looking for a NASA NSX I was looking for a yellow or blue preferably this exact color this exact Oh two two oh four oh five six-speed Targa I was very specific I didn't want a blue interior didn't want a yellow interior but other than that I was fairly open and there were no long beach blue pearls which this is available I jumped on this car as soon as I saw it I had my friend Michael Bauman who is a big NSX guys got like eight thousand mile oh five orange which is probably worth the trillion dollars by now but I saw I had him he was in Chicago he checked out the car for me drove it said everything was on point except for a couple of rock chips and everything which to me means absolutely nothing and I am extremely happy with this I bought this car probably $15,000 less than I would have had to pay for a comparable car at the time because of the rebuilt title it drives perfectly it drives performs as well as any other NSX on the road I'm happy with the purchase so the same with the guy who bought the 458 another good example of when to buy a frame damaged or salvaged car is when exotic cars crashed they're much more expensive to repair and especially when you have the weenie owners that try to milk every oh it's a nick here I'm gonna need a whole new front bumper and some insurance companies it's just not worth the fight so a lot of cars get salvaged out just because of the parts cost on them when they should the SLR McLaren for example that the guy hid in the front on that side broke the wheel off and there was a little fender damage and everything like that that car was worth $200,000 at the time maybe two and a quarter and according to the parts prices through McLaren and SLR it's like four hundred and fifty thousand dollars in damage and that was such a repairable if you look objectively at the actual damage it was on the car that on any car is a repairable very simple repair and on that car it ended up totaling out the car so now you have a car that got totaled out for no reason when it's just the unreasonable price of parts was too high so that being said if you do your homework if you if you have a car that's damaged there's a better way and there's got to be a better way going forward because a lot of people there's a lot of money to be made and lost in repairing and fixing and selling damaged cars a lot of it is shady the car industry is very sketchy with odometer roll backs flood repairs damage salvage title changing the titles over there's a lot of cars out there probably of the cars of their crash probably 40 or 50 percent of them people don't even know they were crash they don't show an accident history on them you can't trust just the CARFAX or the auto check that you see on eBay or stuff we've had cars that have been in accidents we've sold it and that the auto check and Carfax don't even show the accident even though we sold it a scrap so stuff like that takes a while to register sometimes people get surprised by stuff like that but at the end of the day you just want to sort of do your homework as best you can there is a path forward in the future somewhere are one of those that's just starting to see the light of day is vin Wicky ed bully in the guy who did the cross country record works down selling Lamborghinis in Atlanta did this and he's got something that's trying to cattle the use of a car from sale to sale to sale and all the individual owners across the board it's a good start I mean that's really what you should do there's every product out there is to try to like give somebody a reason to devalue your car there's no real product out there that increases the value of the car like with baseball cards and everything else now they have to be GSA certain PSA GSA whatever it is certified in order for the card to have full value I think cars you should buy something it's a subscription you enter all the details on the car gets checked out every once in a while all this stuff that increases the value of your car hey yeah see it was in an accident somebody hid it in the parking lot it repainted here first thing a wholesaler does he walks up and hits it with a paint meter and says this car was in an accident there's cars that get damaged before they even get to the dealer to be sold initially they get damaged on the port they get damaged on the boat they get painted and sent over and you have no idea they were damaged beforehand so and then you're going to own a car that's never been in that an accident that somebody's going to think is in an accident it's going to devalue the car it's all a big game so if you objectively look at the car as a fun toy and you can look at the repair process see if anything was wrong with it and pay an accurate price for it you're in good shape be very careful you don't want anything that was twisted or anything along those lines that's going to be a potential safety hazard or something that somebody bayed together that's all going to cause you trouble in the future but if you see repair invoices with factory parts good stuff even good aftermarket parts it may be a good deal for you something to keep an eye on don't discount the rebuilt or salvage title cars as long as you go out and do your homework and make sure you're getting something good and do a PPI on it you could be driving something sitting pretty for a fraction of the cost somebody else is paying thank you for watching I'll catch you next timeeverybody robbed Freddie here back from 8003 the adventure drive trip just concluded I hope you enjoyed watching all the bull run videos it was my first time driving west across the country so it was my first time seeing all of that and I hope you enjoyed the journey today I'm going to talk about rebuilt and salvage title cars nobody wants the car damaged nobody really wants to own a previously damaged car why I don't know I understand people have a little bit more sentimental value towards cars than I do but that's their prerogative now when somebody's car gets damaged the thing that they want to do especially when insurance is insurance is involved they love to snail the screws on they want the most expensive rental car they can get they want the repairs everything's got to be factory factory factory they want that estimate as high as possible so they can try to work out a deal with the body shop whatever it's a game that's been taking place for many generations the insurance companies are aware of it it's just not worth the headache of them fighting it but that causes a lot of cars to get totaled out that shouldn't be totaled out I had a rental car which a for a 458 was a 2013 2014 whatever it is that car went out it had frame damage on it but it was just a little structural not even a structural piece it was a structural piece to keep the the front bumper flush it wasn't a performance structural piece or a part of the frame that actually affected performance it was just all for the cosmetic look of the fender lining up that car technically has frame damage and I guarantee somebody bought it try to ship it through Florida or something like that fix it for $5,000 and sell it as a non frame damaged car that's just what happened but if you look at the video of the car here this is the major impact here which is the the wheel needs obviously clearly in a wheel it's cracked but even this fender and light and everything like that it's not that far off it looks like it was pushed a little bit and I think on the short term what we're ordering parts we can re-secure readjust and re-secure this back to the car at least attempt to the only thing that's preventing us from writing this is the wheel and then the airbag has to be replaced in this door which I don't know if it's a custom ordered from the factory with the leather um better than that the car itself scrape it right there the rest of the car is good that's uh there's no reason that that car should be listed as a frame damage car it's a stupid little cosmetic piece that car sold for about seventy thousand dollars less than what it was worth and I guarantee somebody was able to fix that car for five or six thousand dollars end of story and that's a great buy for somebody somebody is now driving a car which is just as good even if the title is branded as a frame damage car that car is as good as any other 458 on the road for a fraction of the cost and somebody should drive that to the wheels fall off this car here I'm standing next to my NSX this is also a rebuilt title car and it's my first time buying a rebuild title car but I'm a very rational person I can look at something and say okay let me look and if you have a documented repair history or a documented repair in a car nothing really to worry about like I'm more concerned about like if a frame is twisted if it went to a pole sideways something like that would really be like no thanks I like to drive fast I want the car to drive straight and performance wise I want it to be a hundred percent on par with anything else this car there's a guy Mac ninja on NSX forums all he does is rebuild NSX is this is one of the cars he rebuilt I saw step-by-step everything that happened there was uh the back end was whacked in the back corner and a little bit in the front corner but I saw every single piece that went on I saw the repair process and normally I wouldn't buy a salvage car just for my own personal whatever but but this car I was specifically when I was looking for a NASA NSX I was looking for a yellow or blue preferably this exact color this exact Oh two two oh four oh five six-speed Targa I was very specific I didn't want a blue interior didn't want a yellow interior but other than that I was fairly open and there were no long beach blue pearls which this is available I jumped on this car as soon as I saw it I had my friend Michael Bauman who is a big NSX guys got like eight thousand mile oh five orange which is probably worth the trillion dollars by now but I saw I had him he was in Chicago he checked out the car for me drove it said everything was on point except for a couple of rock chips and everything which to me means absolutely nothing and I am extremely happy with this I bought this car probably $15,000 less than I would have had to pay for a comparable car at the time because of the rebuilt title it drives perfectly it drives performs as well as any other NSX on the road I'm happy with the purchase so the same with the guy who bought the 458 another good example of when to buy a frame damaged or salvaged car is when exotic cars crashed they're much more expensive to repair and especially when you have the weenie owners that try to milk every oh it's a nick here I'm gonna need a whole new front bumper and some insurance companies it's just not worth the fight so a lot of cars get salvaged out just because of the parts cost on them when they should the SLR McLaren for example that the guy hid in the front on that side broke the wheel off and there was a little fender damage and everything like that that car was worth $200,000 at the time maybe two and a quarter and according to the parts prices through McLaren and SLR it's like four hundred and fifty thousand dollars in damage and that was such a repairable if you look objectively at the actual damage it was on the car that on any car is a repairable very simple repair and on that car it ended up totaling out the car so now you have a car that got totaled out for no reason when it's just the unreasonable price of parts was too high so that being said if you do your homework if you if you have a car that's damaged there's a better way and there's got to be a better way going forward because a lot of people there's a lot of money to be made and lost in repairing and fixing and selling damaged cars a lot of it is shady the car industry is very sketchy with odometer roll backs flood repairs damage salvage title changing the titles over there's a lot of cars out there probably of the cars of their crash probably 40 or 50 percent of them people don't even know they were crash they don't show an accident history on them you can't trust just the CARFAX or the auto check that you see on eBay or stuff we've had cars that have been in accidents we've sold it and that the auto check and Carfax don't even show the accident even though we sold it a scrap so stuff like that takes a while to register sometimes people get surprised by stuff like that but at the end of the day you just want to sort of do your homework as best you can there is a path forward in the future somewhere are one of those that's just starting to see the light of day is vin Wicky ed bully in the guy who did the cross country record works down selling Lamborghinis in Atlanta did this and he's got something that's trying to cattle the use of a car from sale to sale to sale and all the individual owners across the board it's a good start I mean that's really what you should do there's every product out there is to try to like give somebody a reason to devalue your car there's no real product out there that increases the value of the car like with baseball cards and everything else now they have to be GSA certain PSA GSA whatever it is certified in order for the card to have full value I think cars you should buy something it's a subscription you enter all the details on the car gets checked out every once in a while all this stuff that increases the value of your car hey yeah see it was in an accident somebody hid it in the parking lot it repainted here first thing a wholesaler does he walks up and hits it with a paint meter and says this car was in an accident there's cars that get damaged before they even get to the dealer to be sold initially they get damaged on the port they get damaged on the boat they get painted and sent over and you have no idea they were damaged beforehand so and then you're going to own a car that's never been in that an accident that somebody's going to think is in an accident it's going to devalue the car it's all a big game so if you objectively look at the car as a fun toy and you can look at the repair process see if anything was wrong with it and pay an accurate price for it you're in good shape be very careful you don't want anything that was twisted or anything along those lines that's going to be a potential safety hazard or something that somebody bayed together that's all going to cause you trouble in the future but if you see repair invoices with factory parts good stuff even good aftermarket parts it may be a good deal for you something to keep an eye on don't discount the rebuilt or salvage title cars as long as you go out and do your homework and make sure you're getting something good and do a PPI on it you could be driving something sitting pretty for a fraction of the cost somebody else is paying thank you for watching I'll catch you next time\n"