Car-shopping tips to avoid a Sandy lemon
Superstorm Sandy has given car shoppers another 230,000 reasons to be wary. That is the number of vehicles the insurance industry estimates were severely damaged during the storm. These cars are adrift along Candee Avenue in Sayville. (Oct. 30, 2012) Credit: Newsday / Thomas A. Ferrara
Superstorm Sandy has given car shoppers another 230,000 reasons to be wary.
That's the number of cars the insurance industry estimates were damaged or destroyed by Sandy's floods and winds. Unknown numbers of them will reach the used-car market as soggy lemons harboring electrical gremlins and corrosion time bombs, experts say.
Cars declared total losses by insurers are reported as such to state motor vehicle departments and usually are sold to dismantlers to be stripped for usable parts. But some are salvaged for resale. As a warning to prospective buyers, their titles are supposed to be stamped as "salvage" or, in certain states, including New York, "flood."
But the National Automobile Dealers Association says some of those cars manage to find their way onto the used- car market with clean -- though illegal -- titles, showing no evidence of flood damage. "Flood vehicles offer a tempting opportunity for criminals to defraud unsuspecting consumers," the association warns in a recent bulletin.
Saltwater exposure can play havoc with computer-controlled fuel and braking systems, electric power steering, power door locks, window regulators and heating and air-conditioning components, among others.
"It's very possible a car can get flood damage and still be drivable," said Cliff Weathers, deputy auto editor at Consumer Reports magazine. "It starts, it runs. But a lot of things can go wrong."
Ravel Mejia, general manager at Millennium Honda in Hempstead, says electrical gremlins can even cause air bags to deploy unnecessarily and without warning. "Saltwater will corrode the wiring," he said.
Here's some advice from the insurance industry, the AAA and dealers on spotting a flood-damaged car:
