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Watch out for drowned cars from Florida. They will be sold as German used cars

“Unfortunately, it is a reality that every natural disaster brings misfortune even to people who were not directly affected by it. In this case, a number of Europeans will also pay for Hurricane Milton, which swept through Florida in October. Unknowingly, they will buy a car that was either overheated or significantly damaged, for example by hitting buildings and not properly repaired,” said Cebie director Martin Pajer.

“For Czech buyers, they will often look like cars imported from Germany, not from overseas,” pointed out the head of the company, which specializes in checking the history of used cars.

Repairing cars after total economic damage is not financially worthwhile. After a cheap repair “just for the sake of it” they will definitely not meet the safety requirements.

Fraudsters who repair and resell cars, change lights and other elements that could reveal the true origin. Compared to functional airbags or wiring, these are smaller items, because these parts can be used from crashed cars, similar to body parts.

As Pajer added, the situation in neighboring Germany has changed over the past ten years. Whereas before 70 percent of used car dealers were Germans, today there are only 30 percent of them. This is one of the reasons for more frequent frauds, including falsification of origin.

Used cars from the United States and Canada have been appearing more and more in Europe and on the Czech market in recent years. Cebia has therefore expanded the sources of data on cars from these countries and stated that it currently has information on 93 percent of overseas cars.

“Thanks to this, we can see that 68 percent of those sold in the Czech Republic have total damage, another 17 percent have moderate or major damage, and only 15 percent of them are undamaged. And this is a normal situation, not an extraordinary situation associated with a natural disaster,” concluded Pajer.

For cars with forged origins, sellers can increase the price by an average of ten to twenty thousand crowns. However, the buyer’s unexpected expenses due to maintenance and repairs can be significantly higher in the following years.

Cebia also recently warned about the danger of selling water-damaged second-hand goods after the September floods in Moravia.