Cipher5170

what exactly goes on a carfax? how does information get onto that database and how is it collected? there have been plenty of cars banged up but carfax is "clean." anyone have some insight?

TIA

too good to be true

it could EITHER be GOOD or BAD or BOTH. Who the hell knows...you have to spend the money to get the report, and even THEN, I'm pretty sure they will have some stupid thing like, "Oh, at 30,000 miles, the customer was a good samaritan and brought the car in for the major scheduled service..." I dunno...

Ink Ming

We paid for the unlimited 30 day version and ran 4 cars through that had each been in a wreck of $1K+ of damage, one even had $14K worth of damage. All reports came back clean. No accident history. Some of the accidents even had police reports as well.

Needless to say, we were not impressed.

mclarenm8d

If you shop for older cars, say a Ferrari Testarossa that has a carfax with bad marks on it, then the carfax is worth the money. One carfax report for a "bad" car will make you a believer. Cars that have swapped hands multiple times with questionable odometer readings are scary, not worth the plane ticket to check the car out.

Here's my perspective through an example - a 1995 BMW 850 CSi has a failed emission report on the carfax. Now, I may not be worried about this, but if I have to dump the car in the future, potential buyers will.

One still has to do their own look over (fender fitment, signs of bolt removal, tape marks etc.). Carfax can't catch everything, especially for one-owner cars.