QuestionI recently purchased a GM Certified Used Vehicle. Before buying the car, I looked at its Carfax report, which indicated no "known" accidents or other issues (flood damage, stolen, rebuilt, etc) with the car.
After taking the car home and bringing it to my local car wash one day, I was drying it off when I noticed the tell-tale roughness of paint overspray on some of the body. Despite what the Carfax report says, this car has obviously had some body work done and been repainted. I also noticed that part of the exhaust system appears to have more rust on it than one would expect for a car of its age and mileage (first went on the road in Jan, 2006; 28,072 miles when I bought it last month). Is there any way for me to find out the true history of this car now - if it had been in accident(s) or flood damaged - given that nothing bad shows up on its Carfax report?
Answer1) It's entirely possible that the car was involved in an accident, and CarFax can't detect it. Only accidents reported to the police are searchable by CarFax; if there was no police report, and the owner paid for repairs out of their own pocket (to prevent insurance premiums from going up, or having their insurance cancelled altogether), then there would be no public record for CarFax to discover.
2) You say, "...this car has obviously had some body work done and been repainted." Are you sure? Detectable paint work doesn't automatically mean that there's been body work. The original owner may have found flaws or dirt in the paint which the dealer repaired, but not well enough that the owner detected or bothered to have addressed. Although the factories won't admit to it, new cars do get damaged in transit which are then repaired before they get delivered to the dealer. It's almost always minor (scrapes, scratches, dings), but it is damage that does require repainting. Evidence of body work (poor panel alignment, body filler not completely sanded, excessive wind noise compared to other identical cars, etc...) is different from evidence of paint work. Make SURE your car has both before you make any accusations (for your own protection).
As for your last question: not really. CarFax searches all public databases; if they didn't uncover any problems, then I don't know where you could discover more detail on the car. Do you still have the CarFax report? Everyone of them I've seen has some sort of guarantee, where if you discover problems they didn't, you can get some financial relief from CarFax. As for going after anyone else, you'd need to be able to prove that they (the dealer, the auction house, the factory) deliberately withheld information from you, or attempted to disguise any previous damage on the car. Unfortunately, that's a pretty difficult thing to prove.
