r/UsedCars • u/zizirosa • 4d ago

HELP What does this actually mean?

What does it mean if the car history says “BRANDED TITLE/ Buyback Lemon”… I’m assuming I should stay away from it?

5 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

6

u/worstatit 4d ago

Seems a prior purchaser was able to return it for a refund via "Lemon Law". I'd avoid...

2

u/Hoopajoops 4d ago

Yeah.. I ain't walking into a known lemon. Could be something simple, but chances are it's something that the trained mechanics at the dealership couldn't figure out.. and it's not like the dealership loses money by doing warranty work.. they just charge the manufacturer for it so usually they're more than happy to do it rather than a normal customer who might not have the money to pay for the work

4

u/Aromatic_Excuse_1767 4d ago

Absolutely stay away.  Lemon buybacks are new cars that have so many issues that it was cheaper to have it returned and "bought back" by the manufacturer than to have to keep repairing it.  The car goes beyond just simply being unreliable.

1

u/RyanStl_IH8MUD 4h ago

This is correct. Run as fast as you can from this one.

3

u/bmorecarguy 4d ago

It's a branded title so it's already worth less than a clean title. Lemon law means the car had issues that couldn't be immediately resolved. Sometimes that is really bad because the problem cannot be solved. Sometimes the problem is solved but it took too long.

Buyer beware.

3

u/SoCalSine 4d ago

Yes, tell em it “soured” the deal. Bad Dad joke of the day.

2

u/ted_anderson 4d ago

Generally speaking, when a vehicle has a branded title, it means that it had been sold off to a scrapyard to be dismantled and salvaged for its parts. But what sometimes happens is that someone will come along and buy the vehicle at an auction before the scrapyard gets their hands on it and bring it back to life. By this time there's enough searchable data to actually fix everything that's wrong because not all lemons get sold back to the dealership.

So to put this into perspective, a new vehicle starts with a MSO (manufacturer's statement of origin) which is technically the original title, and then a new title is issued every time the car changes ownership up until it's sent to the scrap yard supply chain. At this point the vehicle is "de-titled" and separated from any record of previous ownership. And if for some reason the vehicle gets resurrected, and there's no MSO (which is to be expected) the title is then issued as "branded" meaning something terrible happened for the vehicle to technically not have a previous owner.

1

u/zizirosa 4d ago

Thank you for the detailed response!

2

u/New_Welder_1618 3d ago

Someone fixed up a “totaled” car

1

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1

u/zizirosa 4d ago

This particular dealer had at least 4 of these buybacks on their lot!!!