Long story short, I do a fair amount of light collision werk for a local used car lot. VERY reputable guys who usually deal in Mercedes Audis etc. They bought this 2003 Toyota Tacoma at an auction house in Pa. shipped it to Va and sold it. The new owner goes to get the oil changed and when the lift contacted the frame a chunk of " something " popped off to reveal a hole. I first proceed to look at that hole and eyeball the frame as a whole and noticed ALOT of odd shaped areas, as well as NO welds. These frame are nothing more than stamped C channels lap welded together so the welds are quite obvious. After the initial hole was opened up I proceeded to take a hammer to the rest of the frame. The holes were coverd with aluminum tape, bondo'd over then undercoated.The pictures will complete the rest of the story. BTW truck only has 51,000 miles on it. And yes there will be a lawsuit either towards the auction house or the dealer who ran it through there.

Note in on pic the worst area is right where the spring mount is. PLEASE look over ANY used car carefully and if you don't feel comfortable doing it yourself pay someone with experience to do it for you. It could save your life !

Wow!!! That's nuts!!! Guess that truck was in a flood, eh???

How does something like that happen to a newer car. i know how the "repair" was done but how does a 2003 Tacoma end up looking like that. I have an 03 tundra and have been under evry 3000 miles for the last 152,000 miles and mine showes no rust at all and this is a construction work truck. Was this at the bottom of a lake for a ling time or was it in a flood?? What does carfax say about this particular vehicle?

When was Katrina again......?????

Rust???

That is quite amazing. Toyota should be thrown in front of the bus for building a product that looks like that in 4 years.

I sold Toyotas for nearly 10 years from 79-89 and although this truck here has nothing to do with some of what I've seen, they screwed the customers for years.

From the early 70s Toyota was skirting an import tariff of 25% by bringing truck chassis without beds into the U.S. and that allowed them to be taxed as an unassembled vehicle at a rate of 4%(same as parts). They built a bed assembly plant in California(Long Beach, I believe) and shipped the beds to the various ports of entry around the U.S. You could go to any port and see thousands and thousands sitting out in the open in the salt air waiting for chassis. Since they did body changes every 4 years, there was little need to turn them over quickly. I'm sure the notoriously short life of their beds was influenced by this.

The tax law was changed in 1980 and our trucks went up $800 in a single day when they were only around $5,000. They didn't stop doing the process they had started. My 85 SR5 had a perfect driver's side frame and a gone-like-your-pictures curbside in 10 yrs. and had to do the bed after 4 years.

There is a possibility this truck could have spent some time under water, but the brake lines look surprisingly good in comparison with the other metal. Lots of hurricane vehicles around that time, my neighbor got a limited edition Toyota truck out of Florida that was mashed up really bad from trees and rolled over.

looks like saltwater damage ...
Andy

I think it was 2005.

Yeah, I would guess a flood car that was never issued a salvage title. The other possibilty is road salt being that it came dwon here from Pa. BUT I find it EXTREMELY hard to believe road salt did that to a 4 year old car with only 51,000 miles I pushed snow for a couple winters in my Suburban, and can verify the salt does a lot of damage

I had a 1987 Carrera, got it cheap, I knew it had been wrecked,
Parted it out, and found this,
Very nice sculpture work on the entire floorboard , looked arrow straight at first glance. Notice the crumpled section filled with foam then bodo , and a nice coating of undercoat. Scary

Come on now, I've lived in Wisconsin my entire life, thus am used to driving in snow, salt, sand, etc... Not in 3-4 years!!! I have never had a vehicle that new, and have not had that kind of damage.. (914 doesn't count due to battery issue in hell hole) That is unless the truck was strictly used to push a salt pile with a plow every day for the 3-4 years :-)

That is common. Folks form one state get vehicles that were damaged (Katrina) and sell them at auction in another state after prettying them up. Pure BS. That is some shady stuff there, though.

a carfax on that truck might be interesting. salvage title laws must vary from state to state. my mom's car was involved (i was driving at the time) in a minor mishap in nov. the damage was confined to fender/wheel well area just aft of the pass side rear tire. in no way does the damage affect the operation of her car. the repair est to her 165k 85' cougar exceeded the fair market value, resulting in the car being totaled by the insurance co. the total was reported to the state, registration was canceled, and my mom had to apply for a new title which will state "SALVAGE" on it. the adjusters at Farmer's Ins (the at fault party's co) did not enjoy dealing with me. 4 words they hate. washington state insurance commissioner.

k

It's gotta be a katrina truck. Lots of that going on a year or more ago.

That appears to be a plan and simple case of covering up the rust areas. I am suprised the tape even stayed on.
Seems like an inspection of the underside would have given some indication of a problem.
Buyer:"yes your honor we did inspect the truck. It was real purty and shiny, big tires and a great stereo. It went fast too.
Judge:Did you inspect the underside of the truck or have a Pre Purchase Inspection before you bought the truck.
Buyer: DUH No.
Judge: Case dismissed.
CCL

I agree that the frame damage is severe, but I have seen two year old cars in Michigan with rust bubbles, those who have never lived in the real rust belt, have no idea how hard it is on cars. Cars have gotten better over the years with plating, ect, but if you drive your car year round in MI ect it will rust, and never be the same.

There was a pic floating around not long ago, of a blue toyota that broke in half when it was lifted up at the dealer.

If you do a search for "toyota" and "frame rust" or "frame broken" it's not as uncommon as you would think.

PPI on any car, even a pinto
Ferg

Or a Merkur
Katrina cars are very easy to tell , all of the lights have water lines in them and all of the trim screws are rusty. I saw some at the insurance auction before the warnings went out to the Auction and Insurance companies.
CCL

I'm a little more suspect of the truck having lived near the beach and being in a low level ocean flood. N.C. coast is famous for these when smaller hurricanes hit. Sea will rise enough to invade the frame, but not high enough to get inside. IF it were a Katrina flood car the whole interior would have had to been replaced or at the very least power washed ALOT to have kept it from stinking. Either way it is total bullshit for a human being to do something so deceptive IMHO. Unfortunately this is the werld we live in

Flood cars also usually have a smell about them, a really bad smell especially from salt water.

Lots of Katrina cars floating around.....your not safe even buying from a dealership ..... Couple buys a used Kia from the dealership here.....it starts to have problems....they do a search on it and find out it's originaly from Florida and was declared a Lemon....sold as such for $13K....flipped thru a few auctions and turns up here and is sold to them for $22K....when confronted the manager says "We're not breaking any laws. We don't have a lemon law here"

My uncle used to buy & sell cars thru the dealer auction in North Dakota....as a buyer you had 24 hrs to file a dispute with the auction house if you were not satisfied with the purchase (hidden defects). You and the sellar either came to a agreement about the purchase or the auction house would refund your money.

Our guys actually bought 2 from this auction house. They caught the problems with the first one before it sodl and the auction housde quite willingly bought that one back. Chris has been talking to them about this one ( before I found out how bad it was) and told me they may or may not take this one back. BOTH vehicles, he did find out, came from the same dealer. IMO the auction hous eshould buy this one back and THEY should proceed with the legal action against the dealer up there.