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from the random-and-intermittent-failures dept.
https://qz.com/1066966/how-many-cars-were-destroyed-by-hurricane-harvey/ and also at other news outlets.
For Harvey victims, it's going to be rough if they lost their car, Houston is a very car-dependent city. Like many states, Texas only requires liability insurance — only those that bought comprehensive coverage will be able to claim the loss on insurance.
Ideally most of these flooded cars will be scrapped, as it's very likely water damage to electrical systems and other parts are not cost effective to repair professionally. However, there will be "new" and used cars on the market that have been underwater (to a greater or lesser extent). Many will be sold "as is" and some of them will be cleaned up and sold fraudulently as if they were not damaged. Buyer beware, these cars will be shipped all over in search of buyers (marks?)
After Katrina, friends of mine with time on their hands bought several new-flooded Honda Civics (which they were familiar with from building "street stock" race cars). They pulled out the interior and then the full wiring harness. Bought new harness from Honda and replaced everything, and had perfectly good near-new cars for pennies on the dollar (and a few days of hard labor).
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 04 2017, @12:16PM (1 child)
Its an interesting data point that a decade or two ago according to UAW figures a $25K car had about $2500 of UAW labor embedded in it, which is probably higher than $20/hr. So its going to take as much work or more to rebuild a car than to just build another one. That would imply flood renovation is a complete and total rebuild, if done right, anyway.
If only the marketplace could be honest ... a semi-destroyed car might be OK for some weird apps. As long as the air bags and seatbelts work, sell them cheap to 16 year old male drivers who are gonna crash anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04 2017, @01:33PM
> ...who are gonna crash anyway.
There is also a need for cars for demolition derby -- but somehow I don't think that all these special niches for a car that is "going to be crashed anyway" add up to more than a small fraction of the cars with water damage.