Car auctions

[Reality]

After seeing how much some of you know about tomatoes and remembering how much some of you know about all kinds of stuff (ie computers),
please do tell me if you know:

What is the goods on car auctions?  I was doing lunch when a realtor told me he got oodles of great deals from the car action.  He referred me to the US Treasury website and said I'd find a crapload of them right here in SoCal.
Long story short, all I'm finding is dealer actions, where you are not allowed to go with the dealer, instead you tell him what you want.  Yeah right, like I'm gonna trust that.  My mo for buying used cars always has been expert mechanic sniffs car over from bumper to bumper including compression test on engine.  Along with Carfax of course.  Joe, any scams as relates to Carfax.  (No not scams by Carfax but i mean shady individuals trying to match a Carfax to a car that it does not belong to, or doing the ole switcharoo after the car is sold.)  I dunno, so many opportunities for scams in these actions IMO.  I also belong to several car clubs and have at times boughten from known club sources thereby guaranteeing reliability.

Seems like eliminating all middlemen would be the way to go.  Ie when someone is going to lose their car to repo, no way they can borrow and hence they are going to get NOTHING for the car, it would be best case scenario for them to sell the car for whats left on the loan.  At least that way they get something, the bank does not get to repo the car.  But how and where to find people with cars about to be repoed.  I know the banks won't cooperate.

Back to the auctions, have you guys heard, no make that known for fact (not "I heard") of great deals that were successfully completed at actions?  And if so how, and where, and why? 

[westkoast]

I dont know about down there but up here they've been running alot of commercials for police auctions.  It is held in a public area and you bid on the cars that have been seized (mainly from drug dealers).  You may want to look for those instead.

[Joe Vancil]

Reality,

I've not heard of any sort of scam of anyone trying to involve us.  Given the fact that the Carfax report for a particular vehicle is tied to its VIN, I don't see how there could be.  Then again, never underestimate the creativity of a crook.

I'm afraid I don't know too much about car auctions and the like.  I honestly believe that if I were buying, I'd buy new, but that's just me.  And, of course, if I did decide to buy used, there's no way in the world I'd do it without a Carfax report.  Wouldn't accept a competitor's report, either, because the one thing I can say for sure about us is that we take data SERIOUSLY.  Data quality is really important to us, and the importance of it is very prevalent in our culture.

The fact that I know so little about cars is part of why I believe so strongly in our reports vs. those of a competitor.  I know the folks around here who *DO* know cars, and the fact that they're so particular (sometimes about stuff that I have no clue about) gives me a great deal of confidence in our reports.  We've got some really sharp folks here.

Is every report 100% complete?  No.  No one's can be, because that bumped fender out on the farm that someone fixed themselves, that was never reported to anyone or anything isn't going to be in ANYBODY'S report.  I'm just convinced that we do it better.

[WayOutWest]

I've been to several car auctions, some public and some private.  It's not a very good option for the most part, the only reason I've bought so many cars at auctions is because I USED to know the mechanics that were responsible for getting the cars in shape to be viewed.  95% of the auctions I've been to were for cars that were being "let go" by untility co's and gov agencies.  You rarely saw a luxury car, for the most part it was trucks, vans, small cars, and some heavy duty cars/equipment.

The thing about auctions is you don't get much time to check cars out and you almost never get to test drive them.  The other drawback is that you, along with everyone else, can get caught up in the frenzy of an "auction" and overpay.

Again my biggest concern is the state of the car itself, I remember having guys tell me to stay away from particular cars for medium to serious reasons and people still bid them up.  I also got some steals on some plain cars with practically new engines.