Ok, who are buying the Salvage Titled Defenders for so much money?? Is it Parts recyclers or Goonzquad wanna be's? (Jokingly meaning people who take salvage titled vehicles and try to make them drivable for a mark up). Here is a Salvage title 2020 MY Defender 100 S that is currently bidding at $52k! For most of the last year all the prices have been insane. I know things are up, but these always take a lot of investment and they will STILL be salvage titled. Where are they going? Anyone have any thoughts?

Link

 

Not sure about the specifics in this case, but I had a Uzbek Lyft driver in New Orleans who told me that he and some friends had a sideline in buying salvage title vehicles in the US, fixing them and then shipping them back to Uzbekistan where the concept of salvage titles does not exist. I would wager that there's a similar thing going on here - especially to areas of the world where new and legal Defenders are not available.

 

Latin America, or south of the border, and Eastern Europe.
Parts_Link on eBay and many others...
Some how JLR created an alternate universe of 2nd hand parts (as OEM being so scarce).

 

Would love to know where they are advertising their 2nd hand parts biz's!

 

I've seen a couple of them chopped up and sold off bit by bit on eBay. I would think that the sum total of selling every little part could make a profit, but what a pain!

 

https://www.ebay.com/str/partslinken...75.m3561.l2563

This is just one of the many.
Also I have friends overseas who actually buy 110 and 90s when they get some that can be put back together relatively lightly. It is indeed a pain, but it pays handsomely overseas. Also, the labor there is a lot less expensive than here.

 

Yeah, PartsLink is the only one that I've seen yet and they are still working thru the pangea 110 that they bought. That's the only one I've seen which is odd. If more companies were parting them out, I would expect to see other sellers/sources.

 

Check this guy out. It's exactly what he does and he details it all here, including the financials.

If you don't have 22 minutes, watch it at 1.5x speed. It's worth it.

 

Yeah, the key is to finding who is parting them out. Also, PICS are everything in the business.

I want to see someone do a restoration of a Defender! Resurrection from the dead. Maybe I'll send the suggestion to the Goonzquad.

 

I'd love to see a full body swap and this was only $16k last year so that seems unlikely now. Can't even imagine how complicated that would be on a Defender.

I'm also wondering what "ships fast" really looks like.