what does this mean?

[no water]

I just received a carfax ( Thanks Fender guy) and where it shows the previous owners all had it registered as 'personal' and 1 owner had it registered as 'commercial'. What does this mean? Rental car? Or other undesirable use? Should I worry?

[Brother]

might have owned it through his business.

[no water]

i also learned that after the commercial owner the car was sold at auction. Does that mean the condition was not good enough to sell retail?

[ruf-porsche]

Could had been a lease car and the lease was up. Normally the stealer would try to resell the vehicle unless it didn't meet their standard for a POC (Pre-Owner Certified) vehicle, at which point he might had sent it to the auction.

[Brother]

Or a trade in that the dealer passed to an auction house.

[Christien]

How long was it owned commercially? Most likely was traded in to a dealership, possible repo'd. Good cars go through the auction all the time. So do bad cars mind you, but an auction isn't necessarily anything to be worried about.

[no water]

OK cool. the commercial owner had it for 2 yrs and 8 months.

[sithot]

Lots of decent cars go through the auction at Manheim but then there are those that are dumped for one reason or another.
A buddy of mine was there last week and saw a beautiful red P-car coming through the line. He said it was stunning but something didn't look right about it.
Sure enough, his "Porsche" saavy buddy had pulled the CARFAX and an accident had been reported. He said it looked like both fenders were replaced and the car was a bit off kilter. Armed with this sort of information, another bullet was dodged.

CARFAX does not always get all the information and branded titles can get buried crossing state lines. I'm always suspicious of a car that's been a lot of places especially when some of them come up more than once. Even with a CARFAX report you should not let your guard down.

Are there are cars out there that were "totalled" and still sold as original and not wrecked? You bet.

"Buyer Beware".

Tom

[javadog]

There is another possibilty that is pretty benign. In some states, albeling a car's use as "commercial" gets you a cheaper license tag. People in Oklahoma have done it for years to save a few bucks. This practice was so abused that now the state requires either business signage on the car or a large "Commercial Vehicle" label be placed on the body of the car to qualify for the tags. The ugly sign has done nothing much to discourage the abuse of the system.

JR

[Noah930]

+1 on javadog's response. Here in MA, people register their cars through their businesses for financial and tax reasons. There are also a lot of street parking spots restricted for "commercial vehicles." I think the law was intended for delivery trucks/vans/etc. But people have abused it for essentially their personal cars (plenty of MBs/BMWs/Lexi running "commercial" plates). If the business were to go belly-up, I'd imagine the luxury car would be sold off at auction.