Up to 45,000 vehicles have been damaged in spring storm flooding, according to Carfax estimates.
The vehicle data provider, including a vehicle history report, offers a digital tool it calls Flood Check that allows shoppers to search vehicles by their identification numbers to check for any known flood damage.
Many vehicles were damaged in Texas, Kentucky and West Virginia in April, May and June, said Carfax, which expects at least some of them to end up on the used-vehicle sales market.
It estimates that even before the spring storms as many as 482,000 flood-damaged vehicles were in operation in the U.S. as the year started.
“The same vehicles pictured in one state, floating in floodwaters, can get cleaned up by scammers and sold elsewhere,” Carfax Vice President of Data Acquisition Faisal Hasan said in its report. “And while these rehabbed cars may look showroom fresh, they’re literally rotting from the inside out.”
The states with the most water-damaged cars are led by Florida, with an estimated 82,000, Texas with 63,000, and Kentucky with 32,000. They’re followed based on Carfax estimates by Pennsylvania, California, North Carolina, New Jersey, South Carolina, Illinois and New York.
Water-damaged vehicles can end up in states other than the ones where they were damaged, Carfax pointed out, including “states where flooding isn’t top of mind for car shoppers.”
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