New car buyers asking dealers to “show me the Carfax” will now be able to confirm that the mint-condition ’91 Mercury Grand Marquis they’re about to buy was not supposed to be scrapped during the Cash for Clunkers initiative.
Carfax Inc. and Experian Automotive’s AutoCheck, the leading sources for basic vehicle history reports, say they’ve acquired from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration the VINs of vehicles that should have been scrapped.
There are no confirmed reports of ex-Clunkers making their way back onto the road and the federal government required numerous extra steps to prevent the cars from surviving long after they were traded, but the history report companies are not ruling out the possibility of isolated fraud incidents.
“Dealers may unwittingly pick up a vehicle that was unscrupulously, somehow through a salvage auction or recycling facility, not clunked they way it was supposed to have been,†Edie Hirtenstein, senior product manager with Experian, told Automotive News.
