Beware of flooded cars, they are showing up everywhere and here's what you need to know

To make things even harder, many flood history vehicles never get reported in the first place.  The car is usually taken to a local mechanic, body technician, car detailer or other similar automotive person and it is reconditioned to hide its true history.  The car is cleaned inside out.  The seats and carpet are shampooed, engine steam cleaned, and rubber parts are coated with dressing to remove or cover up water marks.  Better techs will look for and replace easily seen rusted or corroded bolts and such to further hide its history. 

Most flood cars will have a characteristic mildew smell from the water exposure.  This can be quite hard to cover up, but there are ozone producing machines which almost every used car dealership has that can be very effective in masking or permanently removing this smell or odor.   So, don’t rely on the tell tale mildew smell to inform you the car has been flooded.   This is why it is important to be wary and as they say in the real estate business – do your due diligence!

Okay, so now you know that flood cars are bad and potential ticking bombs when they are placed back on the road.  So how does one safely buy a used car and best minimize their chances of being stuck with a used car?  Well, first pull a car history report.  The two main providers of detailed vehicle history reports are CarFax and Autocheck by Experian (one of the big 3 credit reporting agencies).  Both will give you a detailed history of where the car has been registered, its usage history (car rental, fleet, etc…), and most importantly they will display most title brands like salvage, rebuilt and flood designations. 

It is important to note that obviously this will only work on cars which were properly reported as flood vehicles through the insurance companies or other government agencies involved (as in the case of Hurricane Katrina where the mess was so bad that numerous agencies banded together and helped each other with tasks like this).  A vehicle history report will also help weed out title washing which is also on the rise.  Title washing is running a vehicles paperwork through several more lenient states to produce a clean title with the previous title brands like flood vehicle removed (many of those cars for sale you see on the side of the road by curbstoners have a questionable history that may include flood history and title washing. 

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