teachercd

CN, sort of...it doesn't have to mean it was a total loss..it is odd and I don't totally understand it.  MEM, That is sort of what I am trying to figure out...I think you are right.

IF you can determine it was fixed properly then it might be okay. I just always assume that most of the time, in those situations, that it may not have been repaired completely or correctly. But to be honest, I've always been leery of any used vehicle.

You'd be surprised what insurance companies will declare 'totaled' sometimes. My last two cars both had salvage/rebuilt titles.

My old car was a '98 Mazda Protege that had been in a wreck. But you could see where it had been hit, just up in the front corner, not real major, and the place I bought it from did a pretty clean job on fixing it up. I had that car for twelve years and never had to do anything to it that cost me over $100.

My current car was in a garage when a house fire broke out. It wasn't in the fire, but its windows were down and it got smoke inside. The homeowner's insurance paid for the car along with the house. All it really needed was a good cleaning and time to air out. For a while, when you turned on the A/C it would smell like a campfire, but that faded with time.

Basically, you want to try to get a feel for why that car was totaled. Also note that there's a lot of cars out there with 'clean' titles and CarFax histories that shouldn't be clean. Take some time and at least Google the VIN, see if you can find anything that looks funny. One giveaway is if the car was briefly titled in another state, even though it seems the owner never actually left. Sometimes people flipping rebuilt wrecks will have them re-titled in states with more lenient laws where they won't have to get a salvage title. Sometimes you can also find an old ad from an auction or something where it was sold as a wreck.