[Brucelee]

These are all good points.

Originally Posted by husker boxster

+1 on that.

For every quality repair shop there are at least 5 hack shops. Some of the hack shops are pretty good at hiding their corner cutting. I also agree with Brucelee, have someone who knows what their looking at check it out. Extra investigating and precautions are in order.

But if its had a quality repair done, there's no reason you shouldn't consider this car. C'mon, stuff happens (a piece of space junk is going to land on someone next month). Maybe the PO had it fixed back to factory specs but just wouldn't ever drive a car that's been in an accident. That doesn't mean the car should be sent to the crusher. But the purchase price needs to be lower than what you listed.

If you buy it and keep it for many years and drive it lots of miles, the fact that is was in an accident will be less of an issue when it comes time for you to sell or trade it. I don't mean that it's totally washed clean, I mean that it proves the car was repaired properly and didn't cause you any problems. However, if you buy it and quickly find it's junk, you'll never be able to sell it. That would be way too suspicious to any sane prospective buyer. At that point you might as well start parting it out and eat your losses.

My Dad and I rebuilt wrecked cars when I was a kid 30+ years ago. I always drove nice cars that were a couple years old and very low mileage. I made money on the first 4 cars I owned. Pretty good for high school and college kid, but it was all possible because we repaired damaged cars. However, cars have changed, the methods to fix them have changed, and the materials have changed. The one constant is 1 good shop to every 5 bad shops.

Caveat emptor.