How can you make sure you’re not buying a vehicle that was involved in a serious smash, written off, then rebuilt and prettied up before being put up for sale as an “ordinary” used car without a dodgy past?
Sadly, you can’t be 100% sure.
The South African Insurance Association (SAIA) has a VIN-Lookup platform — based on its vehicle salvage database — that does not include cars previously written off by insurers, because doing that would prejudice those who buy such cars and repair them to the manufacturer’s specifications.
It’s worth mentioning that “written off” is an insurance term that doesn’t necessarily mean the car was a total wreck. It means it was deemed to be “beyond economic repair” (BER), because the repair bill was more than 70% of the retail value of the car.
And, owing to expensive parts, on older cars the BER point can be reached after relatively minor accidents.
In many cases, though, a written-off car ought not to be fixed up and put on sale as an ordinary Code 2 (used) car.
One such car was a 2021 Suzuki Vitara Brezza with just 28,525km “on the clock”, which 84-year-old Bela Bela pensioner “Oom Leon” Bredenkamp bought from a Bryanston-based dealer last month.
He met Rui dos Santos of Red Dragon Motors at a shopping centre after seeing the car advertised on a reputable online motoring site.
A roadworthy test identifies visual defects with the electrical items, bodywork components, steering, suspension and undercarriage, but it will not necessarily pick up if the vehicle has been in a previous collision and then repaired
— Marcia Modiba, acting national director of the SA Motor Body Repairers’ Association
After some negotiation, he traded in his old Toyota Corolla, which was in perfect condition, he says, and paid Dos Santos R230,000 for the Brezza.
It turned out to be a very bad trade for Bredenkamp.
A week after taking delivery of the car, Bredenkamp noticed “a bit of play” on the steering wheel.
A tyre fitment company then told him the car had been in a serious accident, and very poorly repaired.
Alarmed, Bredenkamp asked Dos Santos to take the car back and return his Corolla.
It was a hard no — and besides, the dealer told him, his trusty Corolla had already been sold.
More bad news followed the next day. Bredenkamp took the car to BB Auto Body Rebuilds, where it was inspected and declared unfit to be driven.
Workshop owner Santie Boshoff alleges the car “was bought from the insurer’s contracted salvage yard by an unscrupulous retail dealer, where repairs were poorly undertaken to deceive the subsequent buyer [into thinking] that it was a roadworthy vehicle”.
Faults found on the Brezza made for a long list, including:
- The entire front chassis was deformed;
- All four rims were buckled;
- The radiator was bent and damaged; and both front airbags had deployed and, instead of being replaced, the covers were merely glued back into place.
Bredenkamp said he’d had faith in the car because he was presented with evidence of it having been serviced annually at a Suzuki dealership, as recently as March, and it had been issued a roadworthy certificate a month before he bought it.
I checked with Sukuzi Auto South Africa, and the recent service had indeed been done.
I was unable to contact the Fourways company that issued the roadworthy certificate, but it could well be a legitimate document.
“A roadworthy test identifies visual defects with the electrical items, bodywork components, steering, suspension and undercarriage,” said Marcia Modiba, acting national director of the SA Motor Body Repairers’ Association (Sambra).
“But it will not necessarily pick up if the vehicle has been in a previous collision and then repaired.”
Patched-up accident damage is also unlikely to be picked up during a routine service.
“The only 100% reliable inspection is that done by an accredited motor body repairer,” Modiba said.
When I contacted Dos Santos about the condition of the car, he said it had passed its roadworthy test, and “when the car went to [Bredenkamp] there was nothing wrong with it”.
He suggested the problems could have arisen when the car was stripped for the recent inspection. “Did they put it back correctly?” he asked.
There was no vibration in the car when he sold it, Dos Santos said.
“Have you seen the potholes in South Africa?”
He was prepared to replace the airbags, he said.
“Dealers have to be given the chance to repair.”
When he was asked about how he got the car, Dos Santos said only that it had “come from an auction”.
Bredenkamp says he drove just 35km in the Brezza, and never above 60km/h, before handing it over to BB Auto Body Rebuilds, where it remains.
“It is for cases exactly like this that Sambra has been actively campaigning so hard for an open and transparent database of all vehicles that have previously been “written off” by insurers from SAIA,” Modiba said.
When asked to comment, SAIA said it had asked Sambra to provide it with examples of salvage vehicles it believed had been incorrectly coded, “so that we [can] investigate these together with the relevant members”.
(While Code 2 applies to all used cars, Code 3 applies to rebuilt cars, with Code 3A meaning the vehicle can only be used for spare parts. Code 4s are permanently demolished scrap.)
“[Bredenkamp’s] case is not representative of the way insurance assessors examine damaged vehicles and determine how they should be classified,” SAIA said.
“We stand by our decision not to include Code 2 vehicle records in the VIN-Lookup.”
• Contact Knowler for advice with your consumer issues via e-mail consumer@knowler.co.za or on X (Twitter) @wendyknowler
