True cost of fender bender as buyer?

Beautiful 458 all the right options and color, over 10k miles, but carfax accident. Front bumper re-spray, pics, accident at dealer. All work certified Ferrai incl. paint.

As buyer, how much should the price be reduced? If similar car without accident is $235,000 what is fair price to pay as buyer?

 

There are so many 458's for sale I would buy a under 10k miles car with no stories.

 

I wouldn't pay more than the lowest wholesale / auction price of an equivalent non-accident car.

 

Having owned a 430 with a Car Fax blemish for a very minor accident I can tell you first hand that unless you're going to get a very significant discount, on the order of magnitude of many tens of thousands of dollars, buy a different car.

 

Can you please share which end you were on? Buy for less or got beat up on sale?

The delta in the car I'm looking at is $20k.

 

A new bumper costs 20-30K. It's a fairly strong and large structure. If there is no chassis damage, which is frequently the case in minor accidents, there really isn't a reason to devalue the car.

Of course if there was hood damage then that's a different story since there was more significant damage.

 

Is the car at Seattle Ferrari

 

Are you gonna keep it or sell/trade it in a a year or two?
Problem is in the future it will be difficult to sell/trade.
If you plan on keeping it, get the largest discount you can.


Sent from my 16M

 

Check your PM

 

I must respectfully disagree. If there's a CarFax/Auto check report of damage, the car is devalued (significantly) regardless of how minor the damage. I don't agree it should be that way, it just is the way the world works.

 

Yes you are correct. This is the way the user car market works.

 

Especially on exotics.

 

If you do need to replace the bumper on your car, it might be a good idea to take pictures, and also have the body shop document in writing the extent of the damage. This would help in the sale of the car if Carfax indicates an accident.

But in some cases, Carfax doesn't report anything. For instance, if you drove over a curb stop and cracked the lower part of the aero on the bumper. You could fix it or replace the entire bumper and Carfax wouldn't know. When you sold the car, you could discuss this or not. The car, in my mind, is no less perfect.

Here's something interesting. While waiting for my car to get washed at the service center, I watched as a brand new car was being unloaded. During the shipping and transportation, one of the outside mirrors had gotten damaged. There was some discussion between the transport driver and the service center manager. They replaced the mirror and I'm sure the new owner never was the wiser.

But if you are the victim of an accident, how do you get re-imbursed for the devaluation you might experience when selling the car?