You may have heard the term salvage title if you know anything about cars in America. A salvaged vehicle is one that has been damaged in some way. For example if a car has been severely damaged in an accident it will be made into a salvage title in some cases. It will depend on how badly damaged the vehicle is. Typically speaking the owner of the vehicle will have been paid by their insurance company and the company will have announced the vehicle to be a complete write off. This basically means the car is not able to be repaired.
When you are asking what is a salvage title you may also come across the term junk title. This may give you a better idea of what you are buying if you were to purchase such a car. Basically for a car to be a salvage title it has to have lost at least three quarters of its value prior to the damage being sustained. It isn’t just an accident that could do this – it could be a fire, flood damage or anything else as well. This 75% amount is a key fact to remember.
For instance the car may have been worth $5,000 initially and has sustained $4,500 of damage. This makes it a salvage case. A car that was worth $10,000 may have gone through $8,300 worth of damage to become a salvage case. When you consider what is a salvage title you have to think about the percentage of damage rather than the cash amount. On many occasions these cars are bought by dealers who strip all the good working parts from them to sell to other people. This is one of the common ways to find salvageable parts from such vehicles.