[Ed Note: Andrea Petersen is a new voice we’re featuring on the site. She’s a service advisor who brings a unique perspective on the automotive experience. You all liked her previous piece (“When it’s time to say goodbye to your car”) so we thought we’d bring her back for another post. – MH] There’s a certain type of person who likes to hunt for a bargain, but they’re a casual bargain hunter. They’re not a car flipper or enthusiast, they just like to occasionally browse the local auctions and then one day something nifty will catch their attention. Maybe it’s a decent looking SUV or a luxury sedan that was allegedly a part of some grandpa’s estate. They’re generally not hardcore car people, but it looks like cars they see on the road every day, so this might just be A Good Deal. They go to the auction and take a look at the car. It might have a scratch here and a ding there, but no biggie. The auction will let you turn the key and it fires up ok, but perhaps it has a little bit of a funny noise, nothing terrible. This is where, in a normal car buying situation, you’d put it in drive or 1st for a test drive, but not at most auctions. Even insurance auctions will often allow a tiny bit forward and a little bit in reverse, but the actual driving part of “runs and drives” is down to assumption here. It runs, therefore it must drive. As many car enthusiasts know, “runs” does not equal “drives.” But no worries, how bad can it be? Bidding commences, bidding ends, and hey, you were the last person with their hand up. Congratulations on your new car! It was an exciting experience fending off the other bidders and here you are, the conquering hero of that 2008 Porsche Cayenne with 128,000 presumably gentle miles on the clock! You pay the winning bid, plus some buyer’s fees, and off you go. Time to find out what that little engine noise is and, now that you drive it, the car does feel a little bit shaky, too. “Customer states vehicle feels shaky and has difficulty accelerating, vehicle has been this way since recent purchase, no history given from previous owner. Please check and advise.” I happily enter the car into our system and jump in to take it to the back lot, which is where the fun begins. It starts out feeling shaky like a bad misfire while still parked, but after driving less than 100 feet I start to wonder how the car even made it here in one piece. The hour of diagnostics reveals a laundry list of issues but then the coup de grace: bore scoring. She’s a dead car running. Barely. But how could this be? It ran when you checked it out, it just sounded a little funny. Shouldn’t there be some sort of process for making sure auction cars are OK? Nothing in the auction listing said the car had a fatal engine issue. Your buddy got a great deal on an Escalade at the same auction a month before and that thing runs like a champ! I ::sigh:: sadly and have to tell you that this is very common with auction cars and there is usually a reason they are at the auction. If you found out the car has a major issue and could get $600 for it at the junkyard or limp it through the auction and get a few thousand, what seems like the better financial choice to you? It will be somebody else’s problem soon enough, but that’s a risk the next guy is willing to take, right? And thus the cycle begins anew. How do you get out of this fatally flawed car while minimizing the loss? Send it back through the auction! There was no buyer protection when you bought it and there will be no protection for the new buyer, either. The auction is happy to take a fresh round of fees, it’s nothing special to them. It very well may end up back at our shop under the new owner who is again wondering why this thing is a little funky. The can has been successfully kicked down the road. I see this time and again so let me repeat: cars are at an auction for a reason. It’s less hassle than online ads, less difficult than trading it in or consigning at a dealer. It brings in more money than Heaps-R-Us Pick A Part. Please understand that an auction car is a gamble. It’s buying a car with far less inspecting and testing than you would do in almost any other situation. And again the car is there for a reason. Yes, plenty of people use auctions to clear up an estate, but Grandpa might not have been a big believer in good maintenance habits. He also might not have driven it much in the last few years and cars, like people, become unhealthy when they sit a lot. Also, who is to say it even was part of an estate unless it is specifically an estate-only auction? If you’re a seasoned flipper or want to burn some money on an endeavor that’s more adventurous than a meme stock or several trays of gas station sushi, go for it. If you know what you’re doing you can get an incredible deal at public auctions. David, for instance, bought this great Jeep Cherokee that came via an auction and that turned out great. But if you’re not handy or up for an adventure ask yourself: Are you willing to risk losing thousands of dollars or would you rather put up with Joe McFlakey on Marketplace who will at least let you take it around the block? Yes, it is a pain in the butt dealing with private party sales and yes, there is just as little recourse if you buy a bad car from him as there is from an auction. But at least you can drive it around the block and, critically, you can get a pre-purchase inspection. That couple hundred you would spend in buyer’s fees can instead save you a few thousand dollars worth of headaches. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you at the shop. Illustration by Sally Torchinsky
When It’s Time To Say Goodbye To Your Car: Tales From A Service Advisor The 2022 Toyota GR86 Is A ‘Ferrari’ For Middle-Class Dads The Third-Gen Mercury Capri Was Like The Miata If No One Really Gave A Shit About The Miata: Mercury Monday Got a hot tip? Send it to us here. Or check out the stories on our homepage. Support our mission of championing car culture by becoming an Official Autopian Member. Super cool article, again, keep ’em coming! In other words, the car where you know damn well exactly what you’re getting into. Which is a car that has been wrecked hard enough that repair costs exceed 40% of it’s value. Why does reading about other people’s horrible choices make me feel better about my merely-bad life choices? Does that make me a bad person? Wait, maybe I just appreciate a good cautionary tale? Yeah, that’s it! I’m totally a nice person… really. Our localish car auction is what the state police uses to dispose of all seized vehicles from their drug task force. That has given one very memorable set of Chrysler 300s. Apparently the previous owner(s) were trying to be “fleet” and had 5 of them in different colors. All looked very nice until you got to #5, which had bullet holes and the bumper ripped off. Guess that seizure was done the hard way. Then again, even friends can be oblivious to real car problems. Gotta be really careful of the auctions. But, hey, you might get a government Explorer with the better cargo space in place of the third row or something. Naturally the auction site has it listed as “normal wear” and “runs and drives”. There can be some good cars they took as trade-ins that they’re sending to auction because it won’t have enough profit if they sell it used. Be honest and say you expect no warranty, but, do the test drive. Even better yet, pay for an inspection at the dealer. Win-win for everyone.
- If the auction house allows OBDII scanners (I know not all do), this is a goldmine
- People look at me sideways when I tell them I bought 2 cars (so far) from Copart. The way I look at it is there are 2 types of deals. The ones where the owner drove the car into the ground and its current state is a reflection of that… OR… The PO took good/decent care of the car and had bad luck one day and got into an accident. I would much prefer the second, because once you repair the damaged bits, you have a big head start on the first scenario. In a salvage auction vs public auction debate, I’ll always choose salvage.
Plus then you also have auction fees increasing the cost even more.
No thanks.
I’d rather just buy cars off of sellers directly. Auction cars are not for the faint of heart, wallet, mind, or skill. Visit the auction, really look at the garbage, and know how broken it all is. Why yes, I’ve purchased site-unseen, hard-to-find-parts-for, or wrecked cars from tow and crash auctions. - Meth/Crack pipe (not sure which, I’m no expert) 2. 10″ purple dildo Don’t buy auction cars. Because, yeah that’s pretty accurate (apart from me of course, I’m chaste and virginal). You have some weird hangups, man. So, you gotta ask yourself one question: I’ve got a couple friends that make a solid percentage of their money by flipping cars from auctions. Usually they go with something that has body damage and don’t bother with anything that is mechanically funky. Probably part of a good lesson in that. But the food was spectacular.
