I am helping my daughters search for their first cars, which usually involves 3-4 year-old Leafs or similar. Most dealers now provide a Carfax for their cars, and I've been surprised to see how many have 'damage reported' on the Carfax. Most of those, however, do not list 'accident reported'. And rightly so; 50% of all 4 year old cars can't possibly have been in an accident (could they?). *
The last dealer I spoke to insisted that this likely meant there was a minor scrape, scratch, or small dent and that it didn't imply any damage of consequence. It seemed unwise to immediately trust the person who had a vested interest in selling me the car, but when I went to Google I found little real information on what the different Carfax values mean, and several references to Carfax categories that appear to be legacy now.
This is especially important in the case of Leafs, as most damage reported seems to be in the front, and that's where all the charging hardware is.
It seems that some context clues could be used to bound the likely history of a car. Some thoughts that occurred to me were:
- If "damage reported" occurs immediately after sale to a dealership, that seems like it's more likely they just touched up some minor blemish
- If "accident reported" occurs along with "damage reported", that likely indicates more severe damage that required substantial repair
- If multiple zones are indicated under "damage reported", does that make serious damage more likely, or would a scratch on the right side of the front bumper cover both "front right" and "front" zones?
I do not know how accurate the above assumptions are, though, especially since information surrounding the meaning of the Carfax categories is vague or anecdotal. What information from a Carfax can be used to provide context clues about the likely details surrounding the nebulous "damage reported" mark?
(*) Yes, 50% of all Carfaxes I've seen list "damage reported", but no I do not have anything close to a statistically valid sample size.
