Salvage Title Check by VIN
Check a salvage VIN —
Title brands explained
- Salvage
- An insurer declared the vehicle a total loss. It can’t be driven legally until repaired and re-inspected.
- Rebuilt / Reconstructed
- A salvage vehicle that has been repaired and passed a state inspection back to roadworthy status.
- Flood / Water damage
- Damaged by submersion. Risk of long-term electrical and corrosion problems even after it dries out.
- Junk / Certificate of destruction
- Deemed unfit for the road and typically only good for parts — should never be retitled for driving.
- Clean (with auction history)
- No brand recorded, yet the car still passed through a salvage or insurance auction — worth understanding why.
Recent salvage records
Frequently asked questions
Is a salvage car safe to buy?
It depends entirely on the damage. A theft-recovery salvage may be perfect; a flood or structural salvage can hide expensive faults. Check the declared damage and photos, and have a mechanic inspect it before buying.
What’s the difference between salvage and rebuilt?
Salvage means an insurer wrote the car off. Rebuilt means a salvage car was repaired and re-inspected so it can be registered and driven again.
Is the salvage check free?
Yes. Searching a VIN and seeing the auction summary is free, with no account required.
Can I see flood-damaged cars?
Often, yes. Flood and water damage appear in the declared primary-damage field on many auction records.
Buying a car with a salvage history can be a smart deal or an expensive mistake, and the difference usually comes down to what actually happened to it. A salvage title means an insurer once declared the vehicle a total loss — but “total loss” covers everything from a minor theft recovery to a flooded engine bay. This page helps you check, by VIN, whether a car was sold through a US salvage auction and what condition it was in when it changed hands.
Paste a 17-character VIN and we match it against Copart and IAAI archives. When there’s a record you’ll see the declared primary and secondary damage, the odometer reading, the document or title type, the auction photos and the final sale price. Read together, those fields tell you how serious the damage really was and what the market paid with full knowledge of it — far more honest than a listing description written by the seller.
This page explains the common title brands in plain language so you can tell a rebuilt car from a junk-titled one, and shows recent real salvage records as examples. We show what was declared at auction; we don’t issue the title itself or guarantee a current brand, so treat this as a fast pre-purchase screen, then confirm the live title with the DMV or an NMVTIS report before money changes hands.