Very tidy, slightly damaged E86, salvage sale...
- Thread starter Toed64
- Start date
North West Surrey
North Yorkshire
There must be more too it than a broken aftermarket splitter. Engine light on the dash, at 56k this is worth what 11-12k in good condition so must have something unseen that would make it an insurance cat N. Could be some undercarriage damage that you can't see from the pictures as all the damage is to the bottom of the splitter.
Very light damage can write off old cars now...especially if the owner insisted on a main dealer repair. However, you are right, there is probably a tad more undercarriage damage there, but if the subframe is bent, or the floor to any of the mounts, it would have gone CAT S. I'm convinced that will be easy to fix.tomscott said:
I'd never buy a car like that without looking at it in the flesh first. One of the YouTube channels I follow bought a Golf with a hole though the block where it had thrown a rod. Amazingly the engine still ran and didn't sound that bad but it was more work than they wanted so they moved it on through Copart.
Copart described it as "runs and drives"....
Copart described it as "runs and drives"....
danmiddle2
Active member
Rockhopper said:
Sounds like a fair description! LOL
There's a very poorly Alpine on there which is very sad 
danmiddle2 said:
They even included a video of it running!
Rockhopper said:
That's probably sensible, I normally have a look. There's no come-back; Trading Standards legislation does not protect the buyer for vehicles sold on these salvage sites...even though Copart sells to the public now... CAVEAT EMPTOR!
CAT X (undamaged) cars are very often those that garages, dealers and traders don't want to fix. Copart is often very economical with the description of these vehicles. A friend of mine who is a garage owner, was astonished that Copart did not declare that the engine was knocking on his own late diesel Jaguar XF that he did not want to fix again. It too was described as runs and drives...which it did, but it wouldn't for very far, it needed a new engine. Being very low mileage, it sold for a lot more than it was worth.
In my experience, Synetiq (formerly Motorhog) is a far better company to deal with. I've bought from both of them and I've now let my Copart membership lapse.
I also think that it's safer to buy a damaged (CAT N or S) vehicle than a CAT X, because it's likely that it was serving well until the recent crunch.