belcom

iTrader: (1)

got into a fender bender couple weeks ago. the guy jumped in front of me from a right side stop sign. I was on main road and had right of way. anyway... I hit his rear driver side wheel with my front driver side corner. The bumper was all torn up and shit but the rebar took it well and there seemed to be not much damage beside the bumper. I was not at fault so insurance fixed everything without me paying deductible. Now I went away for vacation and had someone pick up the car from the shop. My friend didn't really check it thoroughly and signed off on it. When I came back and looked at it and I noticed that the hood was still crooked just like after the accident. So I brought it back to shop and told them fix it. They said no problem and got me a rental on their expense.

Now the main part....

Next morning they call me and say that there are signs of previous repairs to the car (something they didn't fix) that indicate that there might have been a serious front end collision on my CL. The hood was fixed right up to the windshield, something with the frame that it's been welded and painted over, windshield replaced, most of the car was re-painted and shit like that. And they ordered the insurance engineer to come down to inspect the car for previous structural damage. He did not come yet.

I bought the CL last August from a guy who had it on fleet lease and the weird thing was that first it seemed like a straight private sale however the car belonged to his leasing company. But as I understand he bought it out and leasing company paid him for it. But for whatever reason I still ended up paying 15% tax instead of 7% (private sale) and got a receipt from the leasing company.

The car did not have salvage title when I bought it. It clearly states BRAND: NONE and no problems were found in Carfax report. But as I understand if there's significant structural damage to a car it needs to get a certificate after it was restored and branded something like Salvage or NIL or some shit. Therefore it makes me think that the leasing company who sold me the car would be responsible for selling me a salvage vehicle as a normal clean vehicle. And I think it is pretty much illegal to do that.

The shop said they will provide a full written statement of their findings.

1. Can I sue the leasing company for main purpose of returning the car to them because the car they sold to me was supposed to be titled salvage?

2. Does the lemon law apply here?

3. What else can I do?

4. Anyone with some law knowledge can help?

PS. I'd like to return the car and get my money back (in full) so I can buy another CL that is clean and has no problems. it was at 120,000kms and I put 30,000kms on it so far.

NSXNEXT

iTrader: (2)

Sure, the hard part is going to be proving the damage was there before you bought it.

Nope.

Unfortunately unless you can prove the damage was done before you purchased the car, it's your word against his.

MarbleGT

yikes!

Moodist

iTrader: (2)

Not sure how it works, but did carfax give a 100% buyback guarantee?

belcom

iTrader: (1)

don't remember about the guarantee but the carfax was clean. gotta lookup the papers.

fuzzy02CLS

iTrader: (2)

Carfax doesn't do anything. There's no way to prove anything you say against what the seller would say. You really have no recourse expect to sell the car & write it off as a bad experience.
Does the car still drive ok? I mean if the body shop just went ahead & fixed what they needed would you still be happy with the car?
Just cause a car's been hit & repared doesn't mean it won't last a long time.

belcom

iTrader: (1)

drives fine, just regular tranny slippage. but if I would want to get rid of it then I'd loose major dollars. it's at 150kms now. I didn't really want to hold on to it any longer and get another car with 70-80,000kms. But now I'm stuck with it. Kinda wanted a 6-speed maxima (03 CLs are way too hard to find around here)

I have no luck with cars period. Every time something new. Fuck I am tired of this shit.