Same price, you decide?
Suppose I should hang onto
My SuperDuty.
Maybe that’s what we should do to members of Congre$$ that are wrecked beyond repair.
Back in the day of the Russian fishing fleet they would buy old rust buckets and bring them back to Russia ,LOL
Just because a car is in a crash doesn’t necessarily mean it’s junk or totaled. American throw away much to much stuff that can be fixed or repaired, insurance companies total out cars that should be fixed and government regulations are making it so cars are far too complex to be easily fixed or repaired...too much waste.
““In the US rebuilding of a car, and making it legal again, takes six months and let’s say $5,000. It takes $1,000 and one month in Georgia to fix the same car.””
All my cars that I have driven were X titles purchased from Co-Part which is an auction liquidator of cars, mostly insurance owned or bank repos.
Currently driving a Ford Fusion hybrid that was a roll over and picked up for $400. Platinum package, leather interior. The biggest part costs are airbags and computers.
Russians in the game explain why auction prices have been shooting up the last few years. I’m shopping for a 2018-20 Chevrolet Impala with the 6 cyl engine for my next ride. The are incredibly roomy, like a Tardis, they are bigger on the inside. You could easily put 6-8 bodies in the trunk.
Hubs is a mechanic and we run our own repair business with 4 mechanics.
He picked up a complete 1959 Ford Tudor from a farmer for $200 and he still had the original title! Plan to restore it to take grandkids for ice cream and do our small town parades.
I sold my motorcycle a few years back and dude straight up told me it was going to Russia.
I expect this is mostly European vehicles given shipping costs. Many years ago when I worked in automotive, I learned the following: At the time 15 million cars & trucks were sold each year in the US. 10 million were scrapped out or otherwise disposed of each year. The total number of vehicles was growing in the US by 2 million/year. That left 3 million vehicles/year, which were overwhelmingly going south of the border.
Cars that crash is the US used to end up in ARKANSAS. They would be shipped to scrappers in Missouri who would take two or three, make an auto that ran, then run it down into Arkansas to be sold as an “abandoned vehicle” You could get a new title showing it had never been wrecked.
No guarantee it would last driving it off the lot. I always wondered why Dad never could get a good car there.
It was an old Arkansas scam that a working companion told me about it in the 1990.
I really liked this article — kinda heartwarming. I learned something I definitely didn’t know, and it was an FYI-opener.
Thousands of cars that crash in US are ending up in Russia
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Thousands of cars that are stolen in US are ending up in Russia
FIFY
Rubles For Clunkers
>> in size to more than 40 football pitches
that ever nagging curiosity — the size of a football pitch
Thousands of late model cars that crash are driveable, serviceable BUT the electronics/sensors/cameras are impacted so they are deemed unsafe on US roads and are “totaled.”
They go to Russia perhaps but they definitely are sold to somewhere.
The US requires that cars repaired under insurance have ALL safety features restored, regardless of cost, and some repairs requiring calibrations cost many thousands just due to having to buy expensive equipment and then train and then do the work.
The question becomes - just how important is that thing that tells you if you’re out of your lane or fights your steering? Some of us here, as in ALL of us (except that 13 year old non-US Zeeper) learned to drive without those systems. So, maybe it’s time to have an ADULT discussion about allowing these cars to degrade somewhat as long as they maintain primary safety features (such as seat belts and safety glass, for example), so they don’t have to be junked the next time they get a scratch.
Any flood damaged rigs?
Are used to fly into Almaty Kazakhstan, we would often see cars that have dealership badges on the back from US dealerships! Our understanding was that storm cars make it across the border to Mexico and then or shipped to Russia/Kazakhstan. Who knows… But I’ve certainly seen them. They even had to have special license plates made because of the shape of US license plates as opposed to the rest of the world.
Russia can pull out the computer chips and use them in their drones and smart bombs.
My understanding is that insurance companies are totaling motor vehicles that they would have paid to repair several years ago, because the 2nd and 3rd World resale value is greater than the payout to total the vehicle.