Option 2C Totaled Mustang from 1996 to 2004

What happens when pops buys Johnny a used 1998 mustang on his 16th birthday?  Short answer is that the insurance company soon owns a steaming heap, and they will sell it for salvage if they can.

There are a few auction centers around the US that work with an online broker to sell their totaled cars (and other seized, repo'd, or traded in junk.  It is like ebay but a little different.  Let's call it heapbay.  They go by Copart.com.

I searched for, mustangs at Pa locations, v8, stick shift, 1996 to 2004.  Mustangs in this era had a passive anti theft system (PATS) where the key had a chip that the computer checks.  So I confined searches to cars that had the keys included.  I confined my interest to things that were tboned, rear ended, or lightly front ended.  Keep in mind that they will stage the car for the pictures by placing the bumper back in place so it is easy to eliminate a def bad, but hard to be sure one is good.

Here is a good example of what you want:

Here is what you don't:

The fee structure on heapbay is pretty intense.  There are loads of fees that they don't advertise clearly.  The bottom line is they are approximately percentages of the sell price.  If you win a car for $1000, expect to pay about $1600 total by the time you leave the place with it. You also have to front 10% of the money to Copart just to bid.  Since you are buying just one car your fees are higher than many of the professionals you bid against.

Here is the other wacky thing.  You hook into this ebay style bidding war and you have the high bid when the bidding stops.  What you have won is the privilege of your bid going into the live auction and being bid automatically up to your max if needed.  You don't have to attend the auction, but boy isn't that fun!?  They blow through about a car per minute x three different auction lanes while guys with more expensive memberships than you bid remotely from all over the world very quickly.  These guys buy bunches of cars and load containers and have them shipped to africa, central america, etc for who knows why.

If you want to get a feel for what stuff goes for, you have to sit through the live auction.  Some stuff goes for nothing.  Some stuff goes for crazy money, and it is hard to predict.  I saw a few trends.  If a car rolls over, burns to the ground, or slides over something (undercarraige damage) it is really cheap.  If it was a flood, or light front end, it is expensive.  If it is a newish SUV, or sedan (camry) it is expensive and it is going overseas.  BTW, roll overs almost always have guts in them, so make a mental note not to roll your car, it is apparently not like the movies.

One other thing.  Some state laws require you to work through a broker.  Copart gives you a list of those states and of brokers.  Read their Ts&Cs carefully.  Seriously.  Some of them are pretty rough and will cost you a lot, be difficult to get your money back from, etc.  I bid on a couple cars from New Jersey and used AAA auto sales as a broker.  They were very easy to deal with, and their fees were reasonable.

If this all sounds really shady you are right.  If you get something for really cheap, then it is worth it.  If you are paying close to what you can go buy one for, it definitely is not worth the risk.  When I was looking at the MG13B project I lost a few crashed miatas that went for more than I could get a working one from CL for.  After losing a couple modular mustangs, I rethought the EFI modular strategy and started combing CL for v8 stick shift fox bodies...