Dealer Tries To Sell ‘Salvage’ Jeep Wagoneer With a Clean Title, Screws Keep It Together

Selling a salvage car with a clean title, even though it was declared a write-off, is not the most ethical thing out there. However, it does happen. The dealer doctors up the vehicle a bit, slaps a couple of used car parts on it, and lists the car as clean. But whoever buys it will only overpay for a car part donor that might never set wheels on the road ever again.

It seems to be the case with this 2022 Jeep Wagoneer Series II with only 14,577 miles on the clock. The model is powered by a 5.7-liter V8 engine, which sends 392 horsepower through an eight-speed automatic transmission in a four-wheel drive setup.

An SUV of that kind, with low mileage and an accident-free history, would normally sell for anywhere between $50,000 and $70,000, depending on the equipment. However, the one right here is far from an accident-free past. The model was involved in a front-end collision that caused a lot of damage.

The photos in the listing show the front end of the vehicle severely deformed. The hood and passenger-side fenders must have taken one for the team. The windshield is also cracked at the bottom.

The 2022 Jeep Wagoneer is missing the headlight on the right, and the center caps on both front wheels, but those are the least problematic issues about this vehicle. The metal sheet seems hammered out on the driver’s side as the seller is trying to mask the real issues. The rear quarter on the passenger side was also affected by the impact.

The selling dealer tried to cover up several issues

The seller covered up the areas of the airbags with something that resembles the dashboard material, so an eye that is not trained can’t even notice they blew up in the impact. It was a lot of covering up to do, because the driver and passenger front, side, overhead, and knee airbags were deployed. The 2022 Jeep Wagoneer is now for sale with a clean Maryland title with a “Buy Now Price” of $21,900.

Scott is the expert in rebuilds and is the one with the trained eye when it comes to damages and how they are covered up. He is the one who spotted the vehicle online and found several hints that made him dig into the case. To get a closer look at the vehicle, he drove 42 hours to get to the yard in Miami, where it is parked.

He gets to see the Jeep Wagoneer with his own eyes and finds out it was a rental vehicle. He sees that the seller hammered out the areas that took the blow and then used a spray can to trick those who see it into believing things are not that bad.

They must have flattened out the hood and used drywall screws to keep everything in place, so it doesn’t pop back into deformation. The frame rail was pushed back by the force of the crash.

The airbags were cut out because they probably did not look good in the photos and might have scared customers off, while the holes in the steering wheel and dashboard were covered up, as seen in the pictures uploaded in the listing. The vehicle has been put through various sales, but it never went higher than $17,000, so it remained with the seller that is trying to sell it once more.

Older photos show the vehicle was so crumpled before being doctored up that you could barely tell what it was. The hood was pushed toward the windshield, and the front bumper was in pieces.

Those pictures also reveal that the vehicle had a left front wheel from some other car at some point, because the original one must have been damaged. However, the dealer must have fixed it and put it back in its place.

Overpriced donor car

The only reason to buy this Wagoneer is for parts. But at over $21,000, Scott indicates that the price is more than those parts are worth.

Last week, we reported about a Toyota Tundra that had gone through a serious crash. The pickup truck looked every inch non-repairable. However, the selling dealer fixed it up a little bit and auctioned it off as fixable. Not many of those body panels and components had kept their original shape after the accident.

The dealer eventually sold the Tundra for $9,900 to someone who probably did not see the photos before it covered up all the write-off hints. The changes the dealer made were not exactly a fix.