Dale.Traveling wrote:
A salvage title associated with a failed transmission seems a bit unusual. One would normally associate such with an insurance lose. Although it doesn't appear to have been in an accident. Maybe it was caught in a Northeastern or Sandy and flooded. A VIN trace might disclose a bit more history.
As mentioned you could have problems with the new ownership registration plus if you ever intend to sell it. $15K seems OK with the salvage tile if it runs.
What Dale said! That does not seem correct. Before I retired I was in law enforcement and the agency I worked for did consumer fraud. I was looking to buy a Jeep once and I came across a nice used Jeep at a local dealer. (It was even a Jeep dealer). On the price tag was disclosed that the Jeep was a "Lemon Law Buyback." I asked him about it and he said there was a leak in the dash and water would come in when it rained. He gave me this story about how great Chrysler was with customer service so they bought the Jeep back and because it was a buy back they had to list it as a lemon law buyback. Well his story didn't seem right because that isn't how the lemon law worked.
I opened a case and pulled the DMV history on the vehicle and found the previous owner. I interviewed her about it and her story was much different than the dealer. She talked about electrical shorts from the water and how it was back in the shop five times and they never could get the leak fixed so she hired an attorney who specialized in lemon law cases.
Anyway, to make a long story even longer, I wanted to wait until the dealer sold the jeep and then go find the new owner and see what they were told about the lemon law issue. My boss didn't like that idea so he made me go to the dealer and talk to the actual owner about his salesman and the info I had. Of course the owner of the dealership was outraged that his employee would tell such a story and he assured me he'd take care it.
Anyway, the point of my story being, I think there's more the story here than a bad transmission.