I'll probably get a little heat for this but.. Carfax is the gold standard when buying a car and dealers as well as private buyers will low ball you to death based purely off the Carfax. However, when selling, dealers and private sellers will call Carfax crap, inaccurate, and to ignore what it says. The system is ridiculously broken. There is simply no way of knowing the history of a car and Carfax reports are the only way I know of that can paint a picture an "objective" picture.

If you are on the market for a used car, do you look at the Carfax before taking a step to contact, call, or test drive? Do you confirm it's not a salvage title, no major accidents, rental/recreation vehicle, lots of owners, etc? I don't know of any other way to validate these types of details and I'm thankful Carfax exists so I can get this info instead of relying on trust. Carfax has its issues but until we have a better solution, it's the best we have.

 

The problem is that Carfax doesn't have a method of appeal like a credit report and is not held to any standard. Yes, you could and should look at a Carfax. But only use it as a guideline and not treat it as gospel. At some point common sense should enter the picture. When the guy entering the info accidentally adds an extra digit to your mileage so its off by a factor of 10X and you are buying or selling a virtually new car with 11,000 miles but the Carfax says it has it has 110,000 miles, would you trust it? And don't you think you should have a mechanism to ammend the error?

The same mechanism should allow you to distinguish a vehicle that was involved in a fender-bender versus an almost-total loss.

 

Holy s**t Batman! 120 Pounds for a tank of "Petrol"????? Geesh...

Well, the Tesla is a neat car, and if there were more charging stations it might even be a practical alternative to a gas powered car. But as it stands, you can only use it around your home or where there are charging stations. Also, taking an hour to recharge the car would seriously impact travel time.

When those "issues" are resolved, the gas powered car will most likely fade away (as it is use now) in short order.

We do have a huge supply of untapped oil in the US and Canada. Don't want to hurt any feelings so we won't go into why we can't get at it currently.

 

Carfax has two major problems:
1) They don't differentiate between cars concerning damage. They regard the damage to a Ford Focus to have just as much affect as it would on an Aston Martin.
2) They don't say how they determine those values. Copy/paste from a comment I made in another thread, regarding suing a driver that hit my V8V:

Carfax's "experts" don't even know how the system works. The other driver's insurance company sent an "expert" appraiser that is supposed to be one of Carfax's authoritative assessors. Not even he knew where Carfax gets its figures for reduction in value from an accident. In fact, that was one of the reasons why I won the lawsuit so handedly.

 

Those are some good points. 50% charge actually takes around 30 minutes at a charging station. Charging stations are placed around 150 miles from each other so that every 2 hours of driving you'd need to stop for around 30 minutes.

As a DD you'd actually plug it in at night, same as you do with your phone.

As a perk, all charging stations are free.

Go to a store, test drive one, at least just for kicks. It's a very different experience than gas powered cars. Only reason I don't own one is I like short wheel based, small cars and the model S is biiig.

 

Well that's an idea...I had not considered test driving one. Might be a fun thing to do on a weekend.

Yes, well, Tesla is also fighting the battle over the "direct sale to the public" issue. New Jersey has banned the sale of Tesla in the state. They are still trying to get permission from other states.

 

Remind me why we're talking about Rapides and Teslas in this thread again, please.

 

Sorry for the hijack

 

No worries. I think the real hijack was from AGordon678.

 

Yes apologies...

Have I told you how wonderful you look today?

 

Thank you. Hehe.

 

I like all of this thread.
Karl's dealer is my dealer.
My car is a one year younger version of his (minus his touches).
I'm considering doing what he did.
But I'm also considering a lightly pre-loved Rapide instead.

Pretty much covers all of my interests.

 

I can afford one.... NEXT LIFE!!

 

I really don't have a beef with Carfax. I just wish I would have know about the impact of a Carfax report on resale. No one told me, but you guys have been warned!

 

Congrats Karl. Hope you enjoy it when you finally get it. Is the GT suppose to ride bumpier than the regular v8 vantage? I never drove the S before, only the v8 vantage, in both sport pack and non sport pack. I kind of prefer the non sport pack better as the ride is a bit more comfortable.