On Mon, 29 Dec 2003, Ben huot wrote:

> So the way I understand, in the US, you need a title! And on this one
> you can see if it'd clear or not, may I ask if you can see on this paper
> (Title) if a person didn't fully paid the vehicle???? Or if it as been
> in a accident?

In Michigan, there will be a box labelled 'first secured party' giving the
name of the bank, if there's a loan out on it.  I'm sure California has
something similar, but probably not identical.  The way of flagging a
salvage title also varies from state to state, but all of them have some
way of indicating it.

(In case you haven't noticed, the answer to an awful lot of questions
relating to vehicles in the U.S. is "it varies from state to state!" ;) )

> Here, you are fully responsible to do the verification yourself. Many
> people forget this important step, as I said, it's optional to check if
> the vehicle is clear of any debt, as been reconstructed (accident) or
> even, as been stolen.

One useful tool here is CarFax.  For $20 they will check the database for
evidence that the car has been in an accident or the odometer has been
rolled back.  It's not a guarantee that nothing's wrong by any means, but
it will turn up the more obvious cases of title fraud, and in some cases
will turn up police records of previous accidents.  If you find a vehicle
you're serious about buying it doesn't hurt to get the VIN and run a
CarFax report.

David Brodbeck, N8SRE
'82 Volkswagen Diesel Westfalia
'94 Honda Civic Si -- For Sale
'86 Volvo 240DL wagon