Get Gephardt helps Layton man who says he can't sell his car because of wrongfully branded title

LAYTON — You'd be hard-pressed to find an '86 Mercedes in better shape than Dean Carlsen's. He's owned it since the '90s.

"This has been babied and pampered," he said of his car. "It's time to let her go. Let someone else enjoy her."

But after two years on the market, he's had zero offers. It wasn't until recently that a prospective buyer clued him in.

"'I like your car, but there's a red flag with the Carfax report: not actual mileage,'" the guy told Carlsen.

The car history report shows 25 years ago, the Utah DMV branded the title "Not Actual Mileage." That could mean the car's owner reported to the DMV that someone had tampered with the odometer, or it was kaput or even that the exact mileage is unknown.

But none of those apply to Carlsen's car — no fraud, and the odometer works. So, he called Carfax and asked it to remove the blemish. It told him to call the DMV. But the DMV told him it couldn't help.

"'There's nothing we can do,'" Carlsen said he was told. "'This is an error that you should have reported in 1999 and got corrected then.'"

He said he's offered up decades of service records showing the gradual accumulation of miles one would expect. But he still can't get the title cleared, as the Mercedes sits unsold.

"Any potential buyers that see that Carfax report, they run," he said.

Tired of buyers heading for the hills, he asked Gephardt to take the wheel.

"I've reached out to every avenue that I could think of to get this corrected and to no avail," Carlsen told him.

So, the KSL Investigators took his case to the DMV.

"It's entirely possible that somebody fat-fingered something," said Jason Gardner, deputy executive director at the Utah State Tax Commission, the agency that oversees the DMV. "We're fixing it. We are going into our system and calling it exempt because it truly is exempt."

Federal rules state cars older than ten years don't need an odometer disclosure.

"I've done some training to try to make sure that our people are aware of this requirement, and that if the vehicle's older than ten years then they're ultimately exempt to this point," said Gardner.

Gephardt asked him why Carlsen couldn't resolve the misbranded title on his own.

"That I don't know," Gardner answered. "It didn't get to me until I heard from you. The answer is that he probably didn't get to the right person."

Now that the right person has been reached, the DMV has exempted the odometer on Carlsen's Mercedes.

"I'm thinking this is the best 300 SDL in the state of Utah," Carlsen said.

If you're car shopping and come across one with exempt mileage, that doesn't automatically mean that it's bad or good. But it means you should get a car history report. Ask the seller for maintenance records. Get a mechanic to check it out. And realize it's not unreasonable for a 40-year-old car like Carlsen's Mercedes to have an odometer exemption.

Now, if the car is seven or eight years old, that's a different story.

Related topics