If you’re purchasing a used car, you need to learn how to read a CarFax (CF) report, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Many used car dealers run a CarFax and make it available, for free, on most of their used cars for sale. Every car made since 1981 has the 17 character VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) stamped on many components of the car’s body.

If the used automobile you are interested in does not have a CarFax already run you MUST run one yourself. Do NOT, under any conditions, buy a used car without viewing the CF about that car. It costs a few dollars and can save you a small fortune in return.

You have no say in the matter when your car is involved in a collision and the body shop reports the damage to CF. When a car flunks the state emission inspection, that incident is reported to CarFax. When an automobile is totaled by a flood, hurricane, or other types of water damage that fact is reported to CF.

There are squads of criminals that buy destroyed and water damaged cars and fix them up; you would not know that they were totaled. Well, until about six months later when the entire automobile rusts to a hulk one night. If your automobile wears out all four tires in two months you might then determine the car had been destroyed in a horrible auto collision and was repaired to look original.

The number of owners reported, and class of owners, can keep you from buying a heavily used corporate/municipal car that was purchased, for a few bucks, and repaired to look like it was driven by a little old lady. Odometer notifications indicate when the odometer reading has been fiddled with. Electronic odometers can easily be rolled back with a simple device hooked up to a PC and run by a Geek.

All sorts of unusual legal things can impact the car title. CarFax catches all kinds of scams, run by crooks, that can impact the car title. There are salvage, junk, rebuilt, fire, flood, hail, lemon, mechanical limit types of titles and CarFax alerts you to anything but a normal title.

If you are selling your car, and there are no problems, you should pay for the CF and make copies and hand to folks who drop in to look at the car. CarFax will buyback the car if the buyer finds something that CF missed – that warranty is on every car that passes all their checks.