Thinking about selling my 06 and buying an 01 Golf

OK guys I'm thinking about selling the 06 and getting an older TDI to eliminate my $500+ car payment. I have found an 01 Golf TDI with around 64K miles (mine has almost 56K). It's a manual trans car and looks pretty solid, not too far down the road either. Here's the kicker. He's asking $8950, but it has a salvage title. He says it's an insurance payoff for mechanical damage and all they replaced was the turbo. I'm not too familiar with the A4's and wondering if you guys could provide some insight on this "downgrade." I have e-mailed him about the turbo failure. I'd hate to know if metal went through the engine.

malarkey

So it sounds like a deal to be passed upon?

I would bring along a trusted auto body buddy to look at the car throughly. There are lots of ways to hide body work to the untrained eye. The insurance company would have to be completly brainless to scrap a car for a turbo, or they got fed a line of bulls**t by a repair shop to get a car for nothing. Insurance fraud... I would also get a complete carfax history report. That should disclose why it has a salavge title. Nothing to be afraid of, just have to make sure you do the homework and get a 100% on it.

Concur with Speed on this one...

The Carfax is a no brainer. However, I was more concerned with the actual turbo failure than the body and/or salvage title. It would take a lot of thinking and mulling to actually do this thing. I love my 06 but I gotta get rid of the payment. Also, I hear something about catastrophic lifter failures around this year model? Those were the kinda things I was looking for.

I would suspect FLOOD damage. No-one totals a car like that for want of an engine...

Bill

OK he e-mailed me back on the car. He says that it also suffered underbody damage. Somehow he's tying that into the turbo going bad. Sounds like I just got my answer right there.

Funny, I sold my 06 a couple weeks ago for more than I paid for it with 23K miles. Anyways, I'm looking at an A4 also and I've seen the one you are talking about. I didn't really want to deal with all the BS on that one. Good luck though if you can get a decent deal.

He says that it also suffered underbody damage.

Click to expand...

Hmmm... something in the road took out the oil pan, which killed the turbo due to oil starvation? This scenario could also have resulted in other damage that might not not show up for a while.

That's too much money for a questionable car.

McBrew said:

Hmmm... something in the road took out the oil pan, which killed the turbo due to oil starvation? This scenario could also have resulted in other damage that might not not show up for a while.

That's too much money for a questionable car.

Click to expand...

Yep that's exactly what I was thinking. I'd hate to see bearings wiped at 80K.

Well if engine was replaced along with turbo then it would makes sense that car would have salvage title since new engine is about $5k so the damage is about 75% of total value.

I would find out if engine was replaced or not from under body damaged and what exactly was damaged.

He said all they put in the car was a turbo so it's a done deal for me. I'm not willing to take a chance on it. If it had a new crate engine and a new turbo, it's a smoking deal but not the case.