ElectricLove
Member
Thanks for weighing in guys, yeah, like I said I'm not really interested in selling the car. Its perfectly fine and the word salvage printed on the title doesn't scare me. Geico has granted me full comprehensive coverage w/ collision for a fair price so I'm not freaked out about that either. Knowing the car as well as I do from being the one to put it back together is awesome and I wouldn't trade that for a "pristine" non-salvage title, but that is just me personally. I did document the rebuild relatively well, there are 2 items on the car which I didn't do a "perfect" Tesla-quality job on and if I ever sold it I would give full-disclosure on those things, fortunately they are both completely cosmetic and wouldn't be noticed in normal function b/c they are underneath the body panels. The nice thing with my Roadster is that it was a front-end collision, there is no frame damage the front end is built around a "crash-box" which is designed to absorb impact and break in an accident, this crash-box was replaced and no frame/structural damage occurred elsewhere on the vehicle. The other good thing about a front-end collision is that all of the TESLA drive-train is in the rear and is unscathed in this type of collision, the only risk there is when the vehicle is sitting around waiting for auction and may not be kept plugged in, mine crashed at about 80% SOC, sat for a couple months but according to logs never got drained down to a critically low level.
Anyways, I think I have a "perfect scenario" salvage and others may be grossly different, in fact I even found the original owner and met up with him so other than the time sitting at the auction-fields and dismantler shop I know the complete history of the car, it was his daily driver and he now has a Model S, bought the Roadster new, he gave me the key fobs and the original chargers that came with the car...
Because of all this I would like to think the value of mine would be somewhere around $50K, which is about 30-40% below market on a non-salvage, I think thats realistic, maybe I'm wrong though. Fortunately, I don't need to sell it and I don't at this point want to sell it, its a great car and the word salvage on the title doesn't bother me.
I know its a fickle market and the word salvage will eliminate at least a percentage of buyers who are just simply afraid of the salvage title for whatever reasons they have (their insurance carrier won't cover it, they wouldn't ever trust the history regardless of what they are told or see in photos, etc.). When it comes time to buy I'm hoping I find the enthusiast who just wants a good clean Roadster from a 2nd owner who knows the history of the car and believes that saving $20K or so is worth having the word salvage on their title.
Anyways, I think I have a "perfect scenario" salvage and others may be grossly different, in fact I even found the original owner and met up with him so other than the time sitting at the auction-fields and dismantler shop I know the complete history of the car, it was his daily driver and he now has a Model S, bought the Roadster new, he gave me the key fobs and the original chargers that came with the car...
Because of all this I would like to think the value of mine would be somewhere around $50K, which is about 30-40% below market on a non-salvage, I think thats realistic, maybe I'm wrong though. Fortunately, I don't need to sell it and I don't at this point want to sell it, its a great car and the word salvage on the title doesn't bother me.
I know its a fickle market and the word salvage will eliminate at least a percentage of buyers who are just simply afraid of the salvage title for whatever reasons they have (their insurance carrier won't cover it, they wouldn't ever trust the history regardless of what they are told or see in photos, etc.). When it comes time to buy I'm hoping I find the enthusiast who just wants a good clean Roadster from a 2nd owner who knows the history of the car and believes that saving $20K or so is worth having the word salvage on their title.
