Should You Insist On That CARFAX Report? Well…
The answer is YES, and I’ll tell you why: even a seasoned car-buyer with literally 65 car purchases to my name can get lulled into buying a car without doing the proper due-diligence. Now, to be clear, I’ve made many mistakes – too many to count, actually – when it comes to buying vehicles using mostly my heart instead of my head. I consider myself a fan of automotive design…when I was a young man in my 20’s I couldn’t have cared less about a 1965 Mustang’s previous accident history or (lack of) maintenance schedule, I just wanted that beautiful hunk of iron in my garage ASAP. Times change, of course, and with a young family that needed to be safely transported around town, I became more concerned with reliability and longevity in the cars I looked at. Funny how history tends to repeat itself…as soon as my kids became self-sufficient adults, I reverted back to being a high school knucklehead and let my heart do the thinking when I purchased my latest “Morning Show Mobile” back in The Fall of 2019. I’m not sure I asked more than maybe six questions of the salesperson when I bought my 4 year old gleaming red, six-speed, tech-ed out personal chariot…I couldn’t wait to get it home and into my garage. Well, all it took was a few short years for odd-looking “paint-fade” to make itself known, and after a quick diagnosis from local body shop guru/CEO of MAACO in Vacaville Vince McCallister, it was clear the car had been seriously wrecked before I bought it. Vince and his team (shout out to Norma!) corrected the damage and repainted the car, and it looks phenomenal. However, I could have saved myself a ton of aspirin had I let my brain guide the purchase process, rather than the 16 year old repressed teenage car junkie lurking in my soul.
Ask for the CARFAX report, even if it means you’ll have to keep looking for that dream car 🙂
