On Tuesday, two reporters from The New York Times visited a car auction held in Queens by the New York City Department of Finance.
It was a lesson in how consumers can purchase cars that have deadly defects and how sellers have few obligations to disclose those defects to the public.
The department was auctioning 20 cars, which had probably been abandoned or towed, to a group of about 50 bidders. The vehicles were in various states of disrepair and no one had even bothered to remove trash from the interiors.
The list of vehicles, along with their vehicle identification numbers, was posted on the department’s website before the auction. It took the reporters less than a half-hour to run all 20 cars through a federal database of safety defects — something any interested potential consumer can do. That search showed that half of the cars had been recalled for various reasons, including faulty ignition switches and Takata airbags, which between them have killed or injured hundreds of people worldwide.
The vehicles’ inclusion in the database denoted that the recall problems had not been fixed.
The auctioneer at the sale made clear that all of the cars would be sold as is, even if they had been recalled. Buyers had to pay in cash, he said, and all sales were final.
“There’s no buyer’s remorse,” the auctioneer, Dennis Alestra, announced through a loudspeaker. The warnings are reinforced on the Finance Department website, which says that “Purchasers have no legal recourse against the city.”
But as the first cars were auctioned, there was no mention of the specific safety defects.
Three of the cars had the faulty Takata airbags, which have led to the largest automotive recall in United States history. An additional three cars, made by General Motors, had an ignition switch that could suddenly cut off a vehicle’s power, a defect that has killed more than 100 people and led to a $900 million penalty for the automaker.
The cars up for auction on Tuesday sat in a sea of defeated-looking vehicles in an outdoor lot, where potential buyers milled around to conduct cursory inspections.
A man in a Yankees sweatshirt asked The New York Times to leave because Mr. Z Towing, where the auction was held, was private property. The reporters then observed the proceedings on the nearby sidewalk through a fence.
Bidding started low, and some cars sold for just a few hundred dollars.
Auctions like this — fast-paced, cash-only, as is — tend to dispose of cars that have seen far better days. Sometimes, the buyers are licensed dealers who plan to flip the vehicles quickly. Other times they are sold for parts.
But too often, consumer lawyers and safety advocates say, they are sold to low-income consumers who can afford to spend only a few hundred dollars on a car, and need one badly enough that they will take a risk.
Unlike new cars, used cars have no federal requirement that sellers disclose safety recalls or fix dangerous defects, although some state and local regulations offer consumers some protections.
Read more of the original article at The New York Times.
