I had the need to buy a car as mine had been totaled 2 days after Christmas. I don't follow this stuff much and to me as long as I have a dependable car I'm happy.

Some of you are already aware of this info.

I had a Mazda CX-5. After the crash (wife had cracked sternum, me nothing), my wife saw a piece of styrofoam on the road from our car and was appalled that any car had any styrofoam. I doubt there's a car without some, but to her this was trouble. She now wanted a Subaru because our one daughter has always had one because supposedly she and her husband had studied all the safety reports, and they were at the top of the heap.

I first checked KSL Classified. I didn't know that dealers list a lot of cars singularly in the ads, but I was seeing a company called Prestman Auto in SLC had a large quantity of extremely well-priced Subarus. I thought it was just kind of like click bait to get people onto their lot and then sell them what they really had as all those "great" deals would all be gone. I stopped by after work yesterday. That's when I was informed that they had been in business for 30+ years and all they sold were branded/rebranded/salvaged/rebuilt cars (I was told all of those names mean basically the same). I remembered seeing a thread about the topic a few months back here on CB.

Someone in that previous thread alerted us to the fact that if you are interested in any such car, to google the VIN and you'll be able to see pics of what the car looked like when it had been "totalled" per the insurance company. Wow. I'll have to say it was amazing to see the ability of some companies to rebuild such destroyed vehicles. The car I had test-drove had truly been "resurrected from the dead."

I read a lot of reviews of this particular dealership and there was good and bad. I decided I might take a chance on one where I could see that the structural damage wasn't that drastic and that I'd call both my bank and insurance company to find out if there was any problem. That thread had alluded to the fact that there might be.

I found out that my bank would finance these vehicle purchases, but at 1% higher interest rate. I was still considering until I called my insurance company--Allstate. I spoke to two (2) different agents at different times today and they emphatically said that they and "about 99% of the other insurance companies will not insure these vehicles." A co-worker also totalled her car that same week as me and also had Allstate and had purchased one of these categories of cars (a truck in her case). She said the Allstate website claimed they did cover these vehicles, so I had called back my agency. He said once again Allstate doesn't cover these and they had changed over something like the last year on this issue, as did many other insurance companies. He said possibly the website hadn't been updated and that it might have not changed because they had to "grandfather" some policy holders when they changed this policy, so they technically do cover some, but currently not if they know a newly added car is.

I called back Prestman Auto and spoke to a sales associate. He said that was ludicrous and that they sold on the average of 250 of these cars a month and they'd be out of business if it was near impossible to insure these vehicles. He said he had one in fact that was insured currently by Progressive. This individual told me to just give the insurance company the VIN of the vehicle I wanted to add to my policy and they'd cover it.

So I called Allstate again. He said that was exactly what was happening. People were not mentioning that the vehicle they had just purchased had a branded/rebranded/salvaged/rebuilt title and he could see companies not checking. He said the problem is that if they were ever in an accident, and they hadn't told their insurance company that the car was of that designation, that the insurance company would deny coverage based on that omission. That made sense to me seeing that the salesman told me to "just give them the VIN number".

I have no idea who is ACTUALLY correct in what I've been told, but I just wanted others here on CB to know that situation might exist with their coverage if their insurance company doesn't know the vehicle they have insured has that type of title. There are companies that will cover such vehicles, but at a significantly higher premium. Just make sure if you have one of these cars that you have a mutual understanding with your insurance company. It would be bad if you don't and you were relying on them for insurance coverage in the event of an accident.

I ended up buying a Subaru from a "regular" dealership and checked the CarFax to make sure it wasn't a branded/rebranded/salvaged/rebuilt car.