My take on carfax is this: if you see a car with a bad history, it's probably fairly accurate, but a "clean" carfax means nothing. I worked in a high-end body shop, and did lots of customer-pay repairs, even in the $10K-20K range, because people didn't want to turn it in to insurance, and have it hit carfax. This same dealership wouldn't take cars in trade with a bad history, so owners knew they were going to get killed at trade-in time, so it was cheaper to just pay for the repair and go on with their lives.

I did a few PPIs for prospective Porsche owners, and inspected several 911s that were allegedly never-hit, factory paint cars, and I could see blend lines and sloppy masking before they ever pulled the car off the rollback...caveat emptor applies, don't trust a database. Trust your own eyes.

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2002 Ford ZX2
2 x 2013 Honda Civics