Over 1 Million Cars Destroyed by Harvey

Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas on August 25th and dumped more than 40 inches on rain.

As a result, an estimate 1.1 to 1.3 million new and used vehicles were flooded. Many of these vehicles may make it back onto the resale market and the buyers may not know anything about the prior water damage until the mechanical and electric failures start to happen.

If you are shopping for a vehicle now or will be in the near future, make sure to check both the Carfax report and the Autocheck history report to see where the vehicle was last registered or offered for sale. You should seriously consider passing on the vehicle if it was registered or reported for sale in Texas around the time of Harvey. The value of the vehicles registered in TX during this major storm will be severely affected, whether storm damaged or not.

The federal government set up a website to try and keep track of all vehicles affected after hurricane Katrina, so we expect that they’ll do the same this time around. We’ll post that info and a link to that site once it’s live.