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Car with a salvage title
Car without a service history
Car with mismatched tires
Car with brushstrokes in the paint
Car with acorns stored in the glovebox
Car that wants to drive back to the Hertz lot
Car from a lot covered with oil
Press fleet refugees
Boy racers
Camaro wearing Death Metal Stickers
Super hot car in a fly by night Atlanta dealership run by guys that won't speak to you in English and that is being sold for less than half the price of the same car in Nashville. Grrr!!!! I hate being a stupid woman sometimes.
The salvage title is a good one. I was recently debating this with another board member, and he claims salvage titles are not as bad as people make them out to be....and that if your 20 year old beater gets keyed up, it's probable for a salvage title since the cost of paint exceeds the value.
But some of the others are comical. Why not just say the Camaro was probably owned by a mullet wearing trailer park dude in a Def Leppard wife beater?
Boy racer? Who calls them that? Is that just a P.C. way of saying "ricer"?
I guess we don't want to offend anyone now.
I wouldn't say so much ricer as boy racer being the more suiting less direct word. I've heard and seen plenty of horror stories from close friends who've made purchases on Supras, Mustangs, and Z28/WS6s to learn the car had been modified to hell and back. Without the trained eye you'll overlook things such as the air boxes, exhausts, and intercoolers hanging loose, valuable modifications because the removal was costly (race clutch, electronic boost controllers, etc), because their previous owner's only goal was to sell it as quickly as possible.
Unless the virginity of a second hand collector type sports car could be verified, good chance it was molested somewhere along the line. I ran into this when purchasing my '04 Nissan 350Z from a Nissan lot with all of 9,000 miles and change on it back in 2005. The previous owner had already replaced the exhaust and put the stock back on to trade in. Of course, this was learned this when I was adding a new exhaust and saw some of hardware missing. Fortunately it was a new enough car and the modifications were very minimal. However my MR2 Turbo on the other hand...
Was the article created for humor or to be taken in seriousness? Theoretically someone could use this to logically purchase a VW product built between 1999-2004 which should be avoided altogether!
A modded car doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't buy it.
Think about this....name your favorite high performance car....could be Z28, Trans AM, Grand National, Mustang GT....
Ok, now try to find one where someone HASN'T modded it. I.E. bone stock....down to the plug wires. Almost hard isn't it?
Fact of the matter is, if the car was built fast at the factory, chances are it's been modified somewhat for a little better performance.
Case in point....my car in the garage I have put on a bigger exhaust, alcohol injection kit, chip, some suspension mods....not stock but mind you not cobbled up either. No. I took my time myself to make sure it was done right. Before you should have seen some of the crap someone else to it that I had to undo to make it right. (in my eyes) But of course I knew what I was getting into before I got into it, and knew it was nothing I coudn't easily fix myself.
Now what you should be looking for is how well the mods were done. if done professionally, it's really nothing to fret over. However, if someone had to hack this, zip tie that, clothes hanger the exhaust....then you might beging to question it.
And of course if you do not know what you're looking for, then you either need to step back and rethink your options and either walk away and keep searching forever and a day for an "unmolested stocker" or hire someone who knows what their doing or two and have them inspect the car for you.
Yeah, but you don't know how mechanically apt the installer was, or whether it was an ill-advised mod. You can see a super/turbocharger hanging on an engine, but how can you tell the the fuel map and injectors were changed appropriately.
I wouldn't mind headers, etc, but I would definitely shy away from nitrous injected or turbo/supercharger mod.
Captain, while that is true, that's where you have to have "done your homework".
In my situation, the car was a factory turbo car to start with so it wasn't one of those "kits" you buy at Summit and throw on....you know the ones you "do it yourself".....
The turbo was swapped out for a slightly bigger turbo (engine was rebuilt), and then by looking at the injectors sitting in the intake, I could tell they were #36 lb ones which are suitable for the turbo they were being used with. A test drive confirmed that.
But for someone who was just getting into something like this for the first time I could see where they might ask a lot of questions.
Now then again here's another thing you can add to the list of "potential avoids"....if someone says to you in the ad/over the phone/in person: "Oh I just had the engine rebuilt". Ok that's great. HOWEVER here's the $50 question: "Was it rebuilt correctly?" Same thing applies to transmissions and rear axles. Everything has to be right on, or you're going to have issues. In todays day and age, good rebuilders are getting scarce thanks to crate engines/crate trannies.
Grease money Bubba might say he's ASE certified, but we all know in todays day and age that doesn't mean zilch.
Car with a salvage title
Car without a service history
Car with mismatched tires
Car with brushstrokes in the paint
Car with acorns stored in the glovebox
Car that wants to drive back to the Hertz lot
Car from a lot covered with oil
Press fleet refugees
Boy racers
Camaro wearing Death Metal Stickers
I know there's a certain tongue-in-cheek air to this article, but there are a couple things I'd differ on.
Salvage Title: If a car is repaired right, this often doesn't matter. Also, depending on the age of the car, it could be totaled and not have any frame or drive-train damage at all. However, you need to keep in mind that the resale value will be less AND if there is an insurance claim involved, the adjusters will always ********* down in value because of the salvage title.
Beyond that though, I really have to do kind of a car-by-car evaluation. Sleazy low-end "Buy Here Pay Here!" car lot? Not likely. Almost a guaranteed NO. Rice Grinders? Nope. Not my kind of car, even if I wasn't pretty sure some pubescent boy had beaten the crap out of it.
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Same thing applies to transmissions and rear axles. Everything has to be right on, or you're going to have issues. In todays day and age, good rebuilders are getting scarce thanks to crate engines/crate trannies. 
