How to read a Copart or IAAI report before you buy
Front-end damage is not structural damage, and salvage is not flood. A guide to reading an auction report without guessing.
Every car at auction comes with a report. The information is there; the problem is that it arrives in a language nobody taught you. Here is what actually moves the price and the risk.
First: what title it carries
The title is the US ownership document, and its type decides how hard legalising the car will be later.
- Clean title: never declared a total loss. The simplest case.
- Salvage: the insurer wrote it off. It can be repaired, but the history is marked.
- Rebuilt: it was salvage, someone repaired it and it passed the state inspection. Closest thing to clean.
- Flood: it was underwater. The most underestimated category.
A flood with a clean title is still a flood. Water does not show up on the title when the owner decided not to tell the insurer.
Then: the damage type
The ones you will actually see:
- Front and rear end: the most workable, as long as the frame rails are untouched.
- Side: depends on whether the B-pillar or the floor buckled.
- Rollover: roof and pillars. Almost always a walk-away.
- Water/flood: corrosion, modules, harness. The damage shows up months later.
- Hail: sheet metal and glass only. A good candidate if the price reflects it.
- Vandalism: scratches, glass, interior. Cosmetic.
- Mechanical: engine or transmission. That is a bet.
The fine print that decides
Run and drive means the car moved under its own power into the yard. It does not mean it is healthy: it means it starts. Non-runner means it could not be moved, and the cause could be anything from a battery to a seized engine.
Airbags are a line item of their own. If the report says they deployed, count every bag, the pyrotechnic seatbelt pretensioners and the control module. On many models that alone passes Q 10,000.
Mileage has to be cross-checked against the year. A 2019 with 30,000 miles is suspicious, and at auction the odometer is not always reliable.
Photos say more than text
Always look at the interior shots and the boot floor. That is where water corrosion, structural rust and the hits the report summarises in one line actually show.
If there are only a few photos, it is not that the car is fine: it is that nobody documented it. You pay for that in risk.
What we do with it
At Carros De USA the report is read before buying, not after. If the damage does not match the price, the car does not enter the catalogue. And when a car has a history, we publish the history: better that you decide with the bad news on the table.