Flood damage lurks in car lots: Used-car buyers urged to beware of pre-soaked vehicles.

Byline: Rick Barrett

Aug. 31--Waves of water-damaged cars are surfacing for sale in the Upper Midwest following a spate of flooding from Louisiana to Minnesota.

Carfax, an Internet service that can research an automobile's history, says the number of vehicles that were involved in floods and put back on the road again more than doubled in Wisconsin from 2002 through 2006.

Often the cars were shipped north, sometimes on barges or trailers, from hurricane-ravaged states such as Louisiana and Florida. In some cases, the car titles were "washed" by scam artists so buyers wouldn't know the vehicles were salvaged from floods.

"Part of the problem is that people in the Upper Midwest aren't on the lookout for flood-damaged vehicles as much as they would be in Florida or Louisiana. So the …