By Chris Woodyard
The Chevrolet Cavalier that Erik Leiken discovered on the Internet lacked curb appeal. Though only 5 years old, the car, with patches of primer paint, appeared to have had a hard existence.
Still, the odometer showed only 70,000 miles. And the car was a private-party bargain at $2,400, far below what he figured a dealer would charge.
But by the time the Chevy broke down a second time in San Diego freeway traffic, Leiken concluded that he had bought a clunker damaged in Hurricane Katrina. 'I should have had alarm bells going off,' says Leiken, 21, who says his suspicion was confirmed by mechanics who found telltale rust, salt and water damage in the engine and residual moisture in the trunk. A Carfax vehicle-history report proved the car was in Louisiana when the hurricane struck.
As the second anniversary of the storm approaches, relatively little has been done to protect consumers from the estimated thousands of flooded cars and trucks from Katrina that eluded scrappers. And that's to say nothing of the cars and trucks that will become flotsam in hurricanes yet to come.
Here's why: "A crazy quilt of state vehicle laws allows unscrupulous sellers to 'wash' flood designations from vehicle titles by registering them in states that don't recognize water damage as trouble. "The federal government has yet to fully implement a 15-year-old law creating a national database of vehicle histories. Many states still aren't participating. "Legislation languishes in Congress aimed at forcing insurance companies to share vehicle loss data, including flood damage, with online auto history companies such as Carfax and Experian.
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Then, as now, consumers have few protections to ensure they are not buying flood-damaged cars, because of wildly divergent state laws.
A car denoted on its title as having been flooded in one state may not be recognized as flooded in another. States even differ on the extent of damage to a car that constitutes a total loss from flooding.
A survey last year by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators found 13 states that didn't specifically mention flooding as a separate category in explaining why a car might have been classified as salvaged or rebuilt. They were Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Dakota and Vermont. South Dakota didn't have its own flooding designation either, but it carries one over if it comes from another state.
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