Why I Wouldn’t Buy Another Daily Driver With A Rebuilt Title

The path to my Chevrolet Silverado ownership was not planned, and it certainly wasn’t a great financial decision, though my 2015 model has been a good addition to our household fleet and does its job quite well. It’s a basic Chevy work truck with rubber flooring and the only reason I own that truck is because I thought it would be a fun idea to buy a daily driver with a rebuilt title.

I toyed with the idea of buying a vehicle with a rebuilt title many times over the years because I understood that insurance companies will often total a vehicle that is actually quite alright aside from tedious and laborious repairs. What I didn’t foresee; however, was the total headache I’d have trying to get rid of a vehicle with a rebuilt title.

Rewind to the COVID-19 pandemic: Our household needed a different daily driver as a family vehicle. We went through all the usual motions and I did all of my research like I do as a car nerd. Because the market was off the rails with high prices, I looked into rebuilt vehicles since they were substantially cheaper.

[Ed note: ADA is a reader and sometimes contributor who has a lot of experience in the insurance industry, which he sometimes shares with us. This story is a bit more personal. – MH]

We had owned a 2006 Honda CR-V five-speed and it fit our two kids/two large dogs life very well so I decided to look for something similar. Unfortunately, very little SUV or wagon-shaped is available with a manual anymore, or at least not in our budget of under $20k. Even the automatics available were saddled with either high mileage or high price.

How I Ended Up With A Rebuilt Toyota

After several weeks of looking, I came across a mechanic nearby who rebuilt vehicles and sold them from his body shop. He had a 2017 Toyota RAV4 that had very low mileage and was within our budget with a $14,000 asking price.

The exact same spec vehicle at the local Toyota dealership had an asking price of $25,000 with similar mileage. We spent a long time talking to the mechanic and we learned that the reason the car was deemed a total loss was due to mouse damage. They had gotten into the headliner through the dash and damaged the heater core, headliner, trim, and some other small things, so the insurance totaled it out.

The mechanic showed us photos of the work he did to replace all of the damage, so we looked the car over. It all checked out and every system of the car worked fine, including all the ADAS features and sensors. It had none of the electrical gremlins I had worried about, so we bought the car.

We drove the RAV for a year or so before really deciding that we just didn’t enjoy it. Like an awkward breakup, we felt: “It’s not you, it’s me.” The RAV4 is a fine transportation appliance for most focus groups and it has worked for millions of people, but, for us, it elicited no joy and the car just didn’t have a personality, even with modifications we did to try and give it one. We took off the badges and put RAVIOLI on the back, and that made it slightly better, but it just didn’t have the fizz as James May would have said.

It was all hard plastic and had basic, barely comfortable seating inside. However, the worst sin in our mind was the way it drove. Toyota engineers clearly designed the RAV4 for interstates and city driving and not for the Maine roads where we live. These roads contain rolling hills and curves that usually have a 35-50mph speed limit. This RAV4’s transmission was a six-speed automatic that seemed aggressively tuned to its top gear as fast as possible. It would hunt and peck for the right gear all day on our commutes. Often it would drop one, then two gears for about eight seconds, then go back up to its low RPM top gear, only to do it all over again on the next crest. We hated it and it had to go.

This is where the headaches began. If you’ve never had to try and sell a car with a rebuilt title, you are lucky. The endless amounts of questions on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and in person were enough to make me swear off ever doing it again. Explaining that it wasn’t flooded, wasn’t in an accident, and wasn’t broken in any way was just the beginning of the headache.

Then I had to explain that no, financing was not possible since banks do not lend auto loans for rebuilt vehicles. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been an issue if the car was cheap, like under $5k, but it wasn’t. The book value was high for any RAV4 at that point, and even discounting the same savings we got when purchased didn’t help since it just made people rabid to get first dibs on a Toyota for less than $13,000.

I had about 45 messages in the first 24 hours of listing it. I had people from four states away reaching out. I had to explain everything that was CLEARLY written in the listing because, of course, people just don’t read or comprehend what rebuilt titles mean. After several months of listing hell, I added “trade for a truck” to the bottom. It was a desperate moonshot that we could trade our way out of the impossible proposition of finding a very specific buyer for the rebuilt RAV4.

The Venn diagram of practical daily driver, a pile of cash, and a buyer who is OK with branded title vehicles has very little overlap. Sure, there were people who had cash and needed a daily. Yes, there were people who had cash and were ok with branded titles, but they were probably shopping for rebuilt sports cars or potential rally vehicles. These two types of buyers’ needs were vastly different from one another, so our market was basically zero, zilch, nada. We had numerous attempts at purchase where people got cold feet and backed out even after having the car looked over by a mechanic with no issues found. It was a huge time suck and hassle.

It All Worked Out In The End, Though

Finally, after we were thinking we would be living with the boring appliance for the next two decades, I got a ping in my inbox: “Have truck.” Photos were exchanged, and I repeatedly reminded the buyer that it was a rebuilt title as was usual by now for my typed exchanges. I looked at the photos of the truck, ran the value, and frantically did as much research on a 2015 Silverado as I could before I lost the chance to make a deal happen. It had 200,000 miles. Our RAV4 had 46,000.

The buyer offered $3000 on top of the trade and we agreed to meet where they lived in Worcester, MA. So I detailed and cleaned out the RAV4, packed the title, and nervously drove 1.5 hours to a neighborhood I’d never been to in MA. I parked at the address and minutes later a gentleman showed up in the white work truck. He had very obviously just left work from some kind of automotive shop since he was covered in grease and eager to get back to work. The truck had a few cosmetic issues that were not in the photos he shared. There was a quick mention of: “Here is the truck” and “Transmission rebuilt, no receipt, shop down there (pointing down the street).”

I took the truck for a test drive on side streets with the owner; the 4WD worked and it was not rusty in all of the worrisome areas. Good enough for me, since it would be our only shot at unloading that RAV4. We then drove the RAV. I was really hoping he liked it. He didn’t say anything except “Oh shit, cop” when we saw the local constabulary.

I felt nervous and excited to be counting a wad of cash in a random parking lot, signing titles and swapping license plates from one vehicle to another. It was like a Breaking Bad episode with cars instead of drugs. But finally, it was done. No more rebuilt title vehicle! I was the proud owner of my first-ever American pickup, first GM product, and first V8. A huge weight was lifted and I could now relax and get to know a new-to-me vehicle.

In the end, it worked out OK, but I would not recommend buying a rebuilt vehicle as a daily driver, and certainly not one that was more than four figures. The headaches when trying to sell it were not worth my time and frustration. If we’d enjoyed the RAV4, we would have no story to tell, and no adventures in car sales hell. It would have just been a tale of us being wise and getting a working car for much less than inflated pandemic prices.

Instead, learn from my example. There are plenty of situations where a rebuilt title makes sense, but this wasn’t one of them.

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