A woman bought a 2004 Chevy Monte Carlo for $22,000. She paid a high price to get a car that was "G.M. Certified". After noticing that the paint on the different body panels didn't quite match, she had the car checked out and discovered that her car was actually made of the front half and rear half of two different wrecked Monte Carlos that had been welded together! The good news is that the dealer made sure that the windshield washer fluid was topped off. An interesting article, which reveals that you don't always get what you pay for when you buy a certified used car. Our old "friend" Art Spinella of CNW Marketing Research thinks they are a great deal. The article also mentions that, although car companies audit dealers to make sure that they are following certification procedures, they routinely alert the dealer that they are coming- except Toyota. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/automobi...xprod=permalink
yeah.. there was a story here about shady used car dealers. One of them was selling an Impreza I think. It had a clean record and no accidents where the airbag deployed. This was backed up with the "carfax" report (forgot what we call it in Canada lol). So it was really convincing that it was legit. The problem was, it was two Imprezas welded together and the carfax report was for the Impreza who had the rear end collision (so the front was salvaged). Apparently, it is legal in BC to have a franken-car as long as the buyer knows... :|
This actually doesn't surprise me, given that the car was "G.M. Certified", but I feel terribly sorry for the woman who was victimized by this tragedy.
