Danger! Danger! Will Robinson!
As the waters recede from Houston, thousands of flooded cars will be aired out – and shipped out – to unsuspecting used car lots all over the country. Their titles as “washed” as their interiors (and the rest of them, too).
As OJ used to say – and will probably say soon again – look out!
Ideally, these flood-damaged unterseebooten would be written off as collateral damage of the hurricane. But when there’s a buck to be made, people will try to make a buck. What happens is as follows:
The cars – many of them brand-new – are declared total losses and the dealership gets compensated by the insurance company. The cars ought to be recycled at this point – or parted out (some parts are still perfectly usable). But because it is not hard – for the expert crooked car seller – to pull out the carpet, dry the obvious things, clean the car up and then (critical) efface any mention of “salvage” or “flood damage” from the car’s title/vehicle history report – and then sell the seemingly near-new/low-miles car far, far away from the source of its swim, he does exactly that.
And this is a ride you do not want to take.
It’s always been bad news for a car to take a dip. Water in places it’s not supposed to get to – like underneath the carpets and underneath the headliner and inside the trunk – generates both funk and rust. The car will smell moldy no matter what you do, unless you douse it with some overpowering other smell – which is common procedure with flood-damaged cars. Mask the funk with the nose hair-curling aroma of artificial patchouli. This, by the way, is a Danger! Danger! Will Robinson! olfactory warning that something is very wrong with the car you’re looking at.
After the funk will come the rust.
The interior metal – underneath the carpets, under the headliner, in the trunk – was not meant to get wet and so is not generally rustproofed, as exterior panels meant to get wet usually are. Add to this the covering with carpet and other such that keeps the metal wet for a long time.
Flood-damaged cars rot out in weird and expensive to fix places. Like holes in the roof. Fred Flintstone-style holes in the floorpans are no fun, either.
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