Dallasguy1

Was helping a friend look for cars we saw one for a very good price super clean and low miles. When pulled up the Carfax came up a lemon, I was kinda surprised these cars are built soo well what makes it lemon. Any ideas.

xRYD3Rx

Well maybe this is that one bad apple.

rld14

Buyback?
Airbag Deployment?
Frame Damage?

What is this thing like $18,995 or something?

dano

Let's see....it was declared a "lemon" after there was structural damage and air bag deployment? Hmmm...really surprised Lexus fell for that.

Dallasguy1

I don't think frame damage and airbag deployment make any vehicle lemon/buy back. This guy is asking for 26k and it's a F Sports.

Dallasguy1

It was already declared a lemon before the structure damage was reported on the Carfax.

txcoupe

Looks like multiple instances of check engine light coming on and they tried to replace some parts but still having issues

rld14

No they don't. In fact, cars that have been wrecked often don't qualify for buy backs if the manufacturer thinks that the problem can be traced to an accident.

That being said this car has the Triumvirate of awful.

Let's start with the Lemon, the car was likely a goodwill buy back and not an actual lemon law, Lexus will generally buy a car back from a customer before that actually happens. When this happens most all manufacturers will brand the title to the car regardless as they're usually more concerned with transparency and liability than a few dollars.

I would say that, in my experience, a Lemon Law/Buy Back branding on a title isn't as bad as a salvage branding but not much better. Rough rule of thumb 30% value hit. A car like this does, what, $28K at auction? So this makes it a $20K car.

A dirty carfax alone is a 10% hit.. Structural damage with airbag deployment? 30%.

Do I think this car is worth $13-14K? No.. but as a trade, if I were appraising it... as an F-Sport.. I dunno... $10-12,000 hit on value.

$26K is too much IMO, these things with frame damage and without branded titles usually sell for $26-28K or so depending on the Carfax.

Afrosheen

The timing of the accident and lemon buyback don't matter to me. Carfax has alot of bad or late data, so you can't try to form a story from their data.

I'd guess it was a fairly serious accident and the owner took it to the dealer to get it all fixed. Then, the problem persisted, or other problems occurred, and after 2 or 3 more trips to the dealer, the customer gave up and the dealer bought it back and stamped a lemon on it. That's just the most likely explanation if you ignore Carfax's timeline.

Regardless of timing, a lemon is a lemon, and if it has gremlins the dealer couldn't fix after multiple repairs, I sure as heck wouldn't want to buy it. I'd buy a salvage first.