Copart lost the title to his $10k wrecked Audi SQ5, leaving him with a $10k paperweightCharles thought he knew what he was getting when he bought a wrecked 2019 Audi SQ5 from Copart. The SUV had about 120,000 miles, front-end damage and plenty of work ahead, but that was part of the plan. He wanted to turn it into a daily driver and eventually build it toward 700 horsepower. What he did not plan for was spending more than $10,000 on a car he could not even register. More than 60 days after the auction, Charles was still waiting for the title, and the explanation he eventually received made the entire project look a lot worse. The SQ5 had more problems than the listing suggested The Copart listing described the SQ5 as having front-end damage only. Once it arrived, Charles found a damaged bumper, a hole in the grille, missing emblem, damaged headlights and a smashed hood. There was also a much bigger problem hiding inside the car. The SQ5 had a strong water and mold smell, and after Charles removed the seats and carpet, he found standing water underneath the floor. It took about a week for everything to dry out. A sticker on the windshield also warned of “total loss damage all over,” which did not exactly match the auction description. The panoramic sunroof added another expensive problem. It would not retract correctly, and the right side sat roughly half a centimeter lower than the other side. Once Charles removed the glass, he found that the sunroof track had split in half near the A-pillar. Then a $400 grille disappeared The damage was already enough to make the project more expensive than expected, but Charles noticed something else when he compared the car with the Copart auction photos. A piece of the left front fog light grille that was visible in the auction listing was gone when the SQ5 arrived. Charles estimated that replacing it would cost about $400. His broker contacted the yard, but the response was that the part was supposedly inside the car. Charles checked. It wasn’t there. That left him with another missing part and no clear explanation for where it went. But even that eventually became a smaller problem compared with what happened to the title. The title became the real problem More than 60 days after buying the SQ5, Charles still had no title. His broker kept contacting the Missouri Copart yard, and the response was repeatedly that the title would be shipped “tomorrow.” Then the explanation changed. Copart eventually told the broker that the title had been lost in transport. Charles said he did not know whether it was actually lost during transport or had never made it out of the yard in the first place. The broker offered a bill of sale instead, but Charles said North Carolina would not accept that for a standard registration. With the title missing, the SQ5 could not be properly registered and driven as intended. “This car is now a giant paperweight,” Charles said. A $10,000 project that can’t even hit the road The SQ5 was supposed to become Charles’ daily driver, with a much bigger 700-horsepower build planned later. Instead, the project had already swallowed more than $10,000 while the vehicle remained stuck without a title. Charles explained that auction buyers also need to account for the costs that appear after the winning bid. A $3,500 winning bid can quickly become roughly $5,000 to $5,500 after fees and before transportation, and repairs can push the final number much higher. In this case, the damage was only part of the problem. Charles could budget for a broken sunroof, water damage and missing parts. What he could not easily budget for was having a finished project sitting there because the paperwork needed to register it had disappeared. For a car he bought with plans for a 700-horsepower future, the biggest thing keeping the SQ5 off the road was not the engine, suspension or bodywork. It was a missing piece of paper. More from Fast Lane Only Unboxing the WWII Jeep in a Crate 15 rare Chevys collectors are quietly buying 10 underrated V8s still worth hunting down Police notice this before you even roll window down *Research for this article included AI assistance, with all final content reviewed by human editors. The post Copart lost the title to his $10k wrecked Audi SQ5, leaving him with a $10k paperweight appeared first on FAST LANE ONLY.
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