About

Clay Dettmer, buyer of cheap used cars

I'm Clay Dettmer. I buy cheap used cars. That is the whole credential, so here is what it buys and what it does not.

It means I have been on the wrong end of this twice — once with a title that had been branded in a state nobody mentioned to me, once with a recall that had been sitting open for two years while I drove around not knowing about it. Both problems were already written down when I bought the car. I just had not looked, because I did not know where looking happens.

It does not mean I can tell you whether the car in front of you is sound. I am not a mechanic. I am not a dealer, an inspector, or a claims adjuster. I have never turned a wrench for money and I do not examine vehicles. When a page here says a car should be inspected, it means by someone qualified, not by me and not by you off a checklist.

I have no relationship with any history-report company, service-contract administrator, dealer group, or inspection service. Nothing on this site is sold, and no link here pays me a commission if you buy through it.

Why the free records are the ones nobody links to

Buying a used car is one of the few subjects where the entire first page of results belongs to somebody with something to sell. History-report companies sell reports. Dealer blogs sell cars. Search "extended warranty" and every result on the first screen is a company that sells extended warranties — which means the exclusion list and the reasons a claim gets denied are being explained to you by the party that benefits from you not reading them.

Meanwhile the federal government publishes most of what you actually need, free, in databases with no marketing attached to them. Almost nobody links to those, because there is no commission in it.

Three questions started this site:

• "The listing says no accidents. What can I check for free before I hand over a deposit?" NHTSA's VIN decoder, its recall lookup, its complaint archive, and the DOJ-run title system all answer part of that at no cost. Each one also has a blind spot, and the blind spots matter more than the hits.
• "The dealer wants $2,400 for a service contract. What does it actually cover?" That answer is in the contract's exclusion pages and its "what voids this" section, not in the brochure, and the document is usually not shown to you until the finance office.
• "My eight-year-old car failed emissions. Who pays?" Possibly the manufacturer. Federal law requires an 8-year/80,000-mile warranty on the catalytic converter, the engine control unit, and the onboard diagnostic system, and that coverage stays with the car when it is sold. It is one of the few genuinely free remedies in this subject and it appears almost nowhere in the search results.

In each case the answer already exists — as an API, a regulation, or a form. This site does the looking-up and writes down the procedure, including the part where the records cannot tell you what you wanted to know.

Databases, CFR parts, and the gaps between them

Every page starts from something a government agency or a company published in its own name, and that document is what gets linked.

• Free sources first, and named. NHTSA's vPIC decoder, recall lookup, complaint database, and TSB index; the Department of Justice's NMVTIS and its list of approved data providers; the FTC's Used Car Rule at 16 CFR Part 455; odometer disclosure at 49 CFR Part 580; emissions warranty at 40 CFR Part 85. If a page tells you to check something, it tells you which system to check it in.
• What the record cannot see is stated too. A title system knows what a state DMV reported to it. It does not know about an accident that was paid in cash and never claimed. A guide that only lists what a database contains is teaching you false confidence, so these pages list the gaps as explicitly as the contents.
• Contract wording is quoted, not summarised. Whether a service contract pays depends on phrases like "consequential damage," "pre-existing condition," and "commercial use." Paraphrasing those removes the exact thing you needed.
• Enforcement status is checked, not assumed. A rule can be published, litigated, and vacated. The FTC's CARS Rule was struck down by the Fifth Circuit in January 2025 and pulled out of the Code of Federal Regulations in February 2026 — while the older Used Car Rule it would have sat beside is still fully in force. Pages here say which is which, with the date checked.
• Everything is dated, and state rules are split out by state. Titling, temporary tags, and service-contract cancellation are state law. "It varies by state" is where most articles stop and where this one has to start.

A car has a paper trail whether or not anyone likes what is on it, and so does this site. When a page turns out to be wrong, the wrong version is not deleted — the page says what it used to say, what it says now, and the date the two swapped over.

Where the paper trail runs out

It is not a mechanical opinion. No page here can tell you whether a specific car is a good buy; that requires someone with a lift and a scan tool looking at that specific car.

It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for reading your own contract or calling your own state's titling agency. Only the document you signed and the agency that holds your title can decide your case.

It does not sell, resell, or recommend vehicle history reports, service contracts, insurance, or inspection services, and it never will — the fact that everything else in this subject does is the reason it was worth building.

It does not cover electric vehicles. Battery state of health, EV battery warranties, and charging are a different subject with different documents, and pretending otherwise would produce bad pages.

When the record here goes out of date

If a CFR citation on this site has moved, a federal lookup tool has changed what it asks for, or a state titling office no longer exists under the name I gave you, tell me. The correction goes on the page with the date it was made, which is the same standard I would want from a seller.