Looking to buy a car? If the answer is yes, you may have seen advertisements for vehicle auctions. While many of these auctions are for dealers, some are open to the public. If you're thinking about heading out to bid on a car, make sure you know what to look for.
Car Auctions
Car Auctions that are open to public bidding (meaning not restricted to participants with a dealer's license) take place for various reasons including bank repossessions, used car lot overstock or liquidation and police impound liquidation. Since many of these cars do not exhibit major damage, but were acquired by the process of repossession or impounding, some participants can buy perfectly working vehicles for less than what they would pay at a used car lot. In fact, the lure of the car auction comes from the "wholesale" price tag -- paying what the dealer pays to get the car. The assumption is when dealers buy a car at auction they buy it to put on their lot and sell it. This assumption is often wrong since dealers know to expect problems from any car bought at auction. Most reputable used car dealers employ or contract regular mechanics to diagnose each car they buy from auction and to repair any problems that might increase the value of the car. The individual will have a hard time finding these problems simply by having a look under the hood, but there are some easy ways to ensure you get a good buy.
VIN Numbers
Check to make sure the vehicle has a Vehicle Identification Number. No VIN cars often pop up at police auctions. When a car shows up without a VIN number, it means the car has probably been stolen or major parts of the car have been replaced. Check the VIN on multiple spots on the car. You can look on the manufacturer's website to find out all the spots the VIN is located on any particular model car.
See the Vehicle
EBay Motors is a rising star in the auto auction world, but there are problems even in the super convenient world of online auctions. Make sure the seller has no problem with you coming to see his vehicle in person before you buy. If there is any problem with seeing the car, do not bid.
Vehicle History Report
When buying an automobile from an auction, the best friends you can have are a laptop or smartphone. These will enable you to run vehicle history reports (e.g. Carfax.com) on the cars you are looking at buying. To obtain a vehicle history report, simply record the VIN and feed it into the system. This provides a detailed history of the car and will enable you to see accounts of flood damage and other hard to see problems the car might have had in the past.
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