Despite the seemingly constant amount of rain we experience in the Pacific Northwest, we seldom have any major problems with flooding in our main cities. Sure, Tillamook floods every ten seconds in the winter and there are regional flooding issues in more rural areas of Washington and Oregon, but for the most part the major population areas avoid this environmental fiasco.
The same can't be said for the Eastern part of the United States. During the hurricane season, flooding is an unfortunate disaster to be reckoned with and one of the bi-products of floods often shows up on Portland and Seattle area used car lots. We're talking about flood cars. The Internet has tons of write-ups about how to spot one of these cars, so we're going to dedicate this entry into knowing where the cars will likely show up and what cosmetic detailing tricks are used by dealers to hide evidence. The idea is to avoid them all together.
According to online surveys, it's estimated that more than 200,000 cars were damaged in the floods caused by hurricane Sandy. Where do they all go? Are they all salvaged and turned into hunks of metal? The unfortunate reality is that they don't just go away.
It should be no surprise that these cars end up on used car lots. Often dealerships will send buyers to flood ravaged regions to purchase salvaged flood cars at auction. Then they will bring the cars back here to the NW and reconstruct a clean title. They'll clean the car up and sell it to you without ever saying a word about it being in a flood. Of course, when asked the used car sales rep will say that they "...took the car in on trade." More reputable dealers (e.g. those with new car dealerships) usually will not bother with this tactic and often do spend a great deal of money bringing the used cars they do sell up to the best possible standards. Used car dealers are different. One used car dealer that I know admitted to me that nearly 70% of the cars they sell come from auction houses.
When a car has sat in a flood, it may not show signs of it right away. In fact, you could drive your car into a lake and leave it there for a few hours, pull it back out and there would be no effect on the factory paint. Salt water is different though and many flood cars from the east coast have been effected by it. It is much more damaging to the paint and often you will find that these cars have a sort of bleached ring noticeable at the bottoms of the doors (for trucks and higher SUV's) and mid-way through the body panels on sedans and lower cars. On lighter color cars it is not as noticeable, but on darker cars it is unmistakeable if you know what you're looking for. Behind that compromised and bleached paint is rust. Lots of rust! In some cases just repainting these rigs will not solve the problem. The metal has been ruined and would need to be cut out and replaced or each individual part would need to be replaced and painted to match.
On trucks, used car dealers will often put a cheap bed liner over the back to keep you from seeing the paint in the bed. It is usually completely ruined since it sits so low. Also in a truck you will often find carpet pulled and replaced by cheaper rubber liners or find that the carpet in a sedan looks new while the rest of the upholstery looks horrible. Often they don't even bother to replace bad carpet.
Check to see if the car spent anytime in Texas. Texas has real lax rules about licensing cars and many times dealers will run a car through Texas, roll the odometer back, and then bring it to another state. A flood car will have excessive rust and damage to components like brakes. When the time comes to do a brake job, it will be very difficult to get the rotors off and a 1 hour job can turn into 2 or 3 hours.
Leather will be severely damaged by flood. It will get stretched and will lose it's topical color coating. This can be fixed but it will cost several hundred dollars to do so.
Avoid used car dealers if you can. You are always better off buying a car from an individual seller since the price will be cheaper. Also make sure you can trace the ownership and geographic history of the car. Never buy anything that has spent some time in Texas. Buy local cars if you can and if you must go to a dealer, go to one with a series of major manufacture brands who deals primarily in new cars. Ron Tonkin is a good example.
