Salvage Title Cars Are Appearing On Dealer Lots As An 'Affordable' Alternative

Even dealers agree new cars are too expensive these days, which is why some dealers are resorting to something they would never have considered just a few years ago: selling cars with salvage titles. We're not talking about something sleazy like claiming a car has a clean history when it doesn't, but being completely honest about a car's checkered past, and offering it at a discounted price.

The average new car costs over $50,000 these days. Decent used cars are becoming unaffordable as well. Those with lesser means (in other words, the bottom 90 percent) have few options left besides private sales or the discount used car lot. That's why some dealers are willing to consider offering cars with salvage or rebuilt titles that they would not have put on their lots before, according to Automotive News.

In the past, most totaled cars suffered extensive body and structural damage that made them either unsafe to repair or cost more to fix correctly than the car was worth. But these days, cars have many expensive sensors in bumpers and grills that often bear the brunt of an impact. Some cars are now getting totaled because the electronics cost too much to replace on an otherwise rebuildable vehicle. Tariffs on steel and aluminum haven't helped, either, driving up the cost of repairing relatively minor body damage and causing some cars that wouldn't have been totaled before to get totaled now.

Today, buying a car with a salvage title is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. You may get a deal on a car that only suffered light front-end damage, had the bumper and all of the electronics replaced to factory specs, and is as good as... not new, but the equivalent used car with a clean title. Or, you could end up with a basket case that had serious structural damage and was fixed to a price point rather than correctly, or a flood-damaged car that is structurally sound but could give you endless electrical problems.

We've written before about getting a great deal on a salvage-titled car. I've also owned one myself, a 1991 Miata that I got as a second car from a friend who was honest about its history. It had hail damage (and, not coincidentally, a new soft top), massive overspray from a repaint, and a driver's door with a power mirror in a car not set up for power mirrors, an obvious sign that the original door was destroyed and replaced. Although I got it mainly for autocross and fair-weather drives, it was still one of the most reliable cars I ever had.

However, stories like ours are the exception to the rule. The average driver is looking for a fairly new, reliable, and safe daily driver, not a project to restore or maintain. They may not want to roll the dice on whether a salvage-titled car for sale at a dealer was a simple but expensive fender-bender repair, or a significantly damaged car that will give them problems down the road. With even used car prices so high, drivers might not have much choice, either.