Hurricane Harvey might destroy 500,000 cars—and you could accidentally buy one

If you smell a musty odor inside a used car a few months from now, or notice carpeting that doesn’t match upholstery, beware: You might be looking at a survivor of Hurricane Harvey.

About half of the cars that get inundated during Hurricane Harvey and end up in used car lots won’t even have a flood label on them, according to ABC Tampa Bay.

Reselling flooded cars once they’re repaired isn’t illegal, as long as the damage is disclosed to buyers. But that doesn’t always happen, and people are inevitably going to try to pass Harvey-damaged cars off as something else.

“Look at all those vehicles floating around,” Frank Scafidi, of the National Insurance Crime Bureau, told CNBC. “There are people who will try to take advantage of the situation.”

Vehicles flooded up to their hoods are a staple of the pictures coming out of car-loving southeast Texas in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. The storm made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane late last week and has continued pounding the Houston region with feet of rain ever since. The flooding is so pervasive that car experts say 500,000 vehicles could end up in the scrap yard, according to CNBC.

Even before Harvey, Houston had more rebuilt flood-damaged cars on the road than any other U.S. city, according to Carfax, and flood damage can impact a car’s safety, mechanical, and electrical systems.

“This is worse than Hurricane Sandy,” Jonathan Smoke, chief economist for Cox Automotive, told CNBC. “Sandy was bad, but the flooding with Hurricane Harvey could impact far more vehicles.”

When Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, thousands of unwitting consumers bought vehicles that had weathered the flood and been rebuilt, then paired with titles that were washed or reissued by a new state.

“Since then the public awareness of the problem is greater, but with thousands of flooded vehicles it’s hard to prevent this from happening,” Scafidi said.

Other telltale signs that might give away a vehicle that’s made it through a flood, according to Carfax, include a musty odor—sometimes covered up with strong air-freshener—as well as damp carpets, rusty hinges, mud or silt in the glove compartment or beneath seats, brittle wires under the dashboard, and fog or moisture in the interior and exterior lights.

This story was originally published August 30, 2017 at 10:55 AM with the headline "Hurricane Harvey might destroy 500,000 cars—and you could accidentally buy one."