Is there going to be a huge load of drowned vehicles on the market soon?  What happens to all of those cars, trucks, boats, etc that are totaled from flood damage?  The salt water ruins them and they are totaled; I know because my mother and father lost a brand new truck to hurricane Juan, and they get sold.  Are they scrapped after the parts are pulled? 2005 Mercedes Benz with -0- miles, only $3000!

Carfax will be getting a lot of inquiries for the next several years IMHO.

As soon as the water began to rise I told the wife that there will be thousands of flipped southern vehicles sent up north in 6 months and sold as is. It'll happen, always does.

I would guess that most of them will also have salvage (ie: leave it alone at all costs!) titles.

Quoted: I would guess that most of them will also have salvage (ie: leave it alone at all costs!) titles.

Naw those guys know how to wash titles
always get a carfax but even that is not 100%
Knew a guy bought a car with a clean title got a  carfax later for the hell of it seen it was  insurance salvage  sale

It would have to be one earth shattering scorching hot deal for me to buy a flood damaged car. The only way you wont have problems from day 1 with it is to redo ALL the wiring, end to end every last bit.
Then go an replace ALL the electronics. Everyone, end to end every last one.
Then you get to start on the upholstry, pulling panels to clean out dirt gunk and mold etc etc.

Flood damaged cars arent necesarily a abd buy, but you better be ready to be looking at frame and sheet metal before you drive it or your in for a world of headaches. Or, for the optimist....Your in for a car with "character".......

Most will be junked & sent to the scrap yards. Some of the later model cars might be rebuilt with salvage titles & resold. I'd avoid those like the plague. You really don't save any money on a salvage vehicle in my opinion. I once bought a Mercedes 300E that a local dealer had with 56k on it. Got home, found some shit in the glovebox indicating that it had been a flood car in Florida & rather than 56k it had more like 200k on it! (Cluster had been replaced or odometer rolled back) Needless to say I was back at the dealer the next day getting a refund. They were in shock they got caught trying to pull a scam. Never did find out what became of the car.

I'm looking at buying a brand new wrangler that got strangled by the hurricane.  I'm going to clean it up and use the frame/chasis for building a project vehicle.  You can make a lot of money by buying low, fixing it up and turn around and sell it for a whole lot more than you have in it.

So don't buy a hurricane-damaged vehicle.  It leaves more for me !!!!


lawdog

I suspect that due to the fact that a great many of these cars will have spent so much time submerged that most of them will go straight to the salvage yard.  That sea water will be reeking havic with the electronics, wiring and metal parts as well as be all up inside the seats and panels.  To even make one of these cars presentable will be monumental.  I dont look for a great number of these cars to hit the market, there is far too much eletronics is them these days to make repairing them reasonable.

If I can get one cheap, I would love to get my hands on a flooded Evo.

Hell, I will be doing my own gut job to make it a race car.

carfax? Hah!
Looked at a truck last year that the guy TOLD me had a salvage title.I ran the VIN-showed it had sold new in Fla,auctioned and into Ga,then sold on into to NC.No mention of salvage.Guys story was BS-said owner's jealous wife trashed it,and was totaled.Was a top of the line,with rubber floor ing (no carpet) and vinyl interior (Red Flag) I started looking into nooks and crannies.What looked like rusty residue was SILT.From floods.They be everywhere soon.

Salvage title and will probably end up on a insurance auto action.  Lots of flooded cars are sold in these auctions for very cheap.  

In my younger and dumber days (sigh) I bought a used low milage Nissan Sentra from a dealership for my wife (before she was my wife), they swore up and down that it was a one person owner car and was clean.

I found out two years later that it was a rental car and that it had been in a flash flood in Arizona.