KEY POINTS:
Over years of car shopping, I’ve found many common patterns with used cars and common tricks that sellers make to hide issues.
Missing bulbs in gauge clusters, encouraging the wrong accident history reports, missing VIN stickers, and mismatching body panels can be signs to run.
Boy, have I learned some hard lessons in car shopping throughout the years. Having been royally screwed over by a dealer in my early 20’s opened my, naïve, little eyes to the shark tank that is the car industry.
Here are five red flags that show a car is not a good buy:
RED FLAG #1 – Missing Bulbs in the Gauge Cluster
This is harder to do with digitized gauge clusters now, but most cars have gauge clusters with bulbs that illuminate the different lights. On many cars, bulbs power the “check engine” light or the “SRS Airbag” light. You can imagine where I’m going with this.
One of the first cars I bought was missing the SRS Airbag light. I didn’t know to look for this. The sleazy used-car dealer simply took the bulb out. The car was in a huge wreck and the airbag was missing from the steering wheel (the cover was on, but no airbag inside).
RED FLAG #2 – Carfax > Autocheck
Autocheck is backed by a reputable company, Experian. They’ve even become Autotrader’s main background check source. But I can tell you from experience that Carfax contains better history and more relevant information than Autocheck.
If a dealer/seller talks down on Carfax and talks up Autocheck, it’s probably a red flag. If you see discrepancies between the two, trust Carfax’s data more.
When I bought that car with the missing SRS airbag light, the dealer pushed Autocheck very hard and did whatever he could to lead me away from Carfax. Carfax would’ve shown the accident history on this car. I naively trusted it. Don’t do that.
Carfax is not perfect, but it’s the best we’ve got.
RED FLAG #3 – Missing VIN Stickers
Many cars will have stickers along their door jambs with the car’s VIN# on them. For cars with VIN stickers, open every door, trunk, and hood to confirm that you see those stickers on each body panel.
Memorize the last four of the VIN from one sticker and make sure that the VIN matches each panel as well.
If a panel is missing a VIN sticker, either:
It’s in a location that you can’t see
It’s a replaced panel
Car might not feature VIN stickers at every panel
But in general, if a car has VIN stickers on one door jamb, you’ll see them on every door jamb.
Simply google the respective car to know if you should see VIN stickers.
RED FLAG #4 – Mismatching Body Panels
So the Carfax/Autocheck report comes out clean, but something looks off. The car is red on the front door and only “red-ish” on the back door.
Now, the sun can do a number on the clearcoat of a car. It’s common to see older pink-ish Honda’s due to the clearcoat failing. But there should be a natural consistency.
If the front fender is one color and the front door is another, you can assume that something was replaced.
I look at cars in the sunlight, in the shade, and with sunglasses to make sure that I see consistency throughout the car.
SPECIAL NOTE – it’s common for front bumpers to be slightly off in color due to them being made of plastic. But if you see too much of a difference, you can assume the bumpers have been replaced/repainted. (Not the worst thing if the bumpers are replaced, but I do like to see some natural wear and tear)
BONUS – if one headlight is super clear and the other headlight has a ton of sun-fade and yellowed out, it mostly likely means that the side with the clear headlight was fixed/replaced and in an accident.
So watch out for these red flags when you car shop. Always go in with healthy skepticism to make sure you’re not being sold a lemon.
