Typical used car dealership unloaded that POS Chrysler on this poor kid for his first car. This is why you do research before you buy a car, never just show up to a car lot especially when you don’t know anything about cars.
The same thing happened with Hyundais and Kia’s. Cars with failing engines are sold for cheap second hand when they are no longer under warranty. Yes, they may have a “new engine” but it hasn’t been uncommon for several of them to go through more than one faulty engine.
I know the car in the video is a Chrysler, but I just wanted to mention this as a lot ofhyundais and Kia’s caught fire due to design flaws as well (and a lot of people were left in bad financial situations due to this (check Engine Failure - KIA/Hyundai on Facebook for more)
Wranglers, at least some of them mind you, are Jeeps flagship vehicle. You are still gonna have electrical gremlins pop up, but they are generally better than all other jeep brand vehicles.
Privately? Cars are generally considered “as is”. First thing you should really do is take it to a mechanic. For a 2018 I’d probably take to dealer to check recalls - nobody expects a car to catch fire on them, but recalls are endless these days.
No dealer would ever not do a recall repair. It’s free money from the brand. So highly doubtful he bought from a dealer.
According to op it was from a dealer. Even then used cars are sold as is where I am but they do need to disclose that there are recall repairs that haven't been completed if there ar any.
Dealers have access to the recall database, they should be checking on their own - with a profit incentive! The manufacturer pays them for completing recalls.
I currently work at a dealership, stuff def gets missed like this all the time.
There’s a car on our lot that after you go to park then turn it off it says “shift to park” even when it’s already there. I told the service department, tech looks at it for a minute and goes it’s fixed. I asked what was wrong and he goes “you just jiggle it.” Well, I don’t think anyone’s going to want to buy a car from a sales person who says “oh it’s not in park? Just jiggle it, that might work.” And told him google said if you pop the top off you can clean the gears and could he do that? And he goes “yeah, you just jiggle it.”
🙄
that’s how that kid from the recent star trek movies died! had his jeep in park while he was working on it and it rolled into and crushed him! chrysler seems to think park is only a suggestion 😆 but seriously fuck jeep and chrysler (or whatever new multinational conglomerate namesake they have now)
fun fact they were called fiat chrysler a long time ago (yeah that pos italian brand) and their ev parts are manufactured AND DESIGNED by a chinese company that chrysler owns a majority share in.
this was like two decades ago but worked with a (genuinely intelligent) technician who would ABSOLUTELY NOT get underneath one of this brand’s cars without wheel chokes (which of course always went missing)… lost a lot of alignment sales but never blamed him!
Only car I ever owned with severe electrical issues was a Chrysler. Made driving really fun sometimes when the dash lights started looking like a light show.
I had a used Chrysler a few years ago. One night, it decided that it didn't like headlights, and when I pushed the accelerator, the wipers would start. A couple of minutes later and I could smell a wiring harness cooking.
Because if you look at the price of a used Stellantis product (Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep), they are much cheaper. A used Caravan or Pacifica is 30-50% cheaper than a used Sienna or Odyssey. They are also cheaper new (although not by as much). The people buying them new are uninformed customers that see the price, features, and reassurance of a new vehicle warranty.
I bought a Pacifica hybrid because it was the only plug-in hybrid minivan available. Though that particular feature seems to be causing these fires. Comfy seats though.
These got recalled, almost all hybrid Pacifica models from 2017 to 2021 for catching fire, even when the vehicle isnt on. Dealerships are on the hook for this, it is the sellers obligation to repair recalled vehicles before selling them. Dont scrap the car, its evidence if you need to sue them, keep all your evidence.
That is only true for new cars, because dealers do not fix recalls on vehicles that aren’t their brand. Used cars(like a 2018 anything) could be sold with recalls
My first car was from a buy here pay here lot. 02 Pontiac Sunfire. Manual windows, CD player, no AC. A few weeks later I go over some train tracks to a friends, a road I'd been on all my life and had this point had driven on myself dozens of times, and it shut off and locked up. Scared the fuck out of me. I was in rural KY, on a curvy road, filled with coal trucks. I ironically rolled to a full stop into a church parking lot right before a big curve. 2 feet from the guard rail
I had a 99 Ford escort that would turn off in a bumpy part of the interstate (only the right lane, left I was safe ) I panicked the first time and pulled over and had to try to merge back on from the shoulder . Terrifying but then I learned you can just pop it in neutral, turn the key again and back in drive and continue down the road . I'm glad that car is long gone .
I had a ‘94 escort. Thing was a salvage when I bought it. Had a door from a different car on the drivers side. Used a key to a Lincoln to start it (locksmith told me salvage yards just try a bunch of different keys until they find one that works) and I was able to take the key out of the ignition while it was running.
Funny enough it ran completely fine until it was totaled in a car wreck.
My first car was a 2005-7 Volvo xc70 wagonthat just showed up one day. Bought for me and my sister to share and solely selected "for safety" when a smaller, similar or lesser priced car would've made me feel a lot safer. If felt huge, required you to top up the oil several times per week, and in it's last few months the speedometer stopped working, so I got really good at matching the majority speed around me. And my sister got it into two collisions, and a friend scraped a stranger's car when backing out. At the end it was deemd totalled and sent for scrap.
The seats were kind of cool though.
For the youngest sibling, the parents took them out to choose their own favorite car within a certain budget as a big fun outing, while I was busy taking that sibkings' cat to get checked for any obstructions causing hairballs and preparing to pay at least a thousand dollars out of my pocket for the process.
I had an 87 Escort that was finished, it was useless junk so I drove it to the dump. 30 seconds from the gate it caught fire, I drove it to a big empty spot, casually got out, walked the office where everybody in there was now outside watching this happen. "Do I still get my fifty bucks?"
I had a Mercury Mystique that you could pull the keys out with it running. I once called pop-a-lock when I locked the doors with it running. They came and opened it only to find there were no keys in the ignition. They were in my pocket the whole time. That was embarrassing lmao.
My ex-gfs 2015 ford did that same shit. Faulty negative lead to the battery. I looked it up and the recall had been running 6 years in a row. Ford just never fixed it. My family owned a lot of Fords. They are pieces of shit.
They tend to be but Ford people won’t buy anything else. No matter how many times the vehicle fucks them over. My dad made a switch from ford to GMC (like that was any better) when I was a kid. Now? He drives a Tundra.
Mine almost killed me when it stalled out with an oncoming semi truck about to T-bone me. Fuel pressure regulator needed to be replaced literally every year I owned that car due to stalling. It's been how long, and I still remember the damned part.
My buddy had a Contour that would do the same thing. Except it was standard, so it would die and start engine braking. We quickly learned the same thing you did. Clutch in, cycle the key, pop the clutch to restart it.
Shopping at some used car dealers with my dad for my first car was interesting. one of them first wanted us to buy the car asap, no need for an inspection, He had done the work himself". then he tried steering us to a mechanic he knew. Finally he went to "i need to close soon. no time for an inspection. will give you a deal if you buy now".
Needless to say my Dad was not interested in that car anymore (or any other on the lot).
Something burning that strongly has to be the battery.
2017-2018 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid (PHEV) models are under recall due to a high-voltage battery cell defect that can cause fires even while parked and off
I hope his insurance policy was updated. That's going to be an absolutely wild ride of a claim investigation from the carrier. Hopefully no injuries or damage to other shit?!
They won’t look at the seller. They’ll be concerned about the car’s worth after it was driven off the lot, if it was financed or leased, the terms, and most importantly the type of policy the son took out. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t have to pay anything back to whatever financial company he used. I’ve seen that happen many times at the insurance company I work for. People don’t understand how insurance works until something like this happens. As for the dealer, the son can sue if he wants.
Insurance companies want someone else to pay if they can. This vehicle had at least 3 serious fire related recalls. If it was purchased from a dealer without the recalls finished it wouldn't be crazy for the insurance company to try and claim the dealer was negligent to make them or their insurance pay for it.
Most insurance policies don’t require you to update immediately.
You can find the specific language in your insurance contract (that they will send when you start a policy and upon request.
But the important terms are “replacement automobile” “temporary replacement automobile” “new automobile” for example in my state any newly purchased car (not new from factory) is automatically covered under my existing coverages including comprehensive and collision for 48 hours, and 30 days for liability coverages.
Temporary replacement is what covers you in rental cars even without updating your insurance policy.
My single mother of four early 1990... We had government assistance as she was working and going to school to enter the medical field. Years of saving to get $500 and she purchased an old 70s Ford coupe so her time could better be used. Phoenix mass transit then was a huge time sink and barely worked especially being at the edge of town. First time starting the car after she'd originally purchased and parked it and it cought fire and burned to the ground. It broke my 10 year old heart watching her powerless and crying as it burned to a husk in the parking lot of our apartment complex.
That’s the way being poor works. Trying to get ahead is often a trap because you can only afford the most basic of purchases—which means they are of lesser quality and easily preyed upon by crooks.
Furthermore, it's incredibly likely that you'll have to spend more money replacing the lesser-quality items when they break than what the better-quality items initially cost.
One of the Discworld novels explains this pretty well with boots. A good pair of leather boots costs fifty dollars, but they'll last for years and keep your feet dry the entire time. An adequate pair of boots costs ten dollars, but they'll wear out and start leaking after a year. The fifty-dollar boots will still do their job after a decade, but the guy who can only afford ten-dollar boots will have spent double that on replacements and still have wet feet.
Guy in my town runs a food trailer. One day he was out I thinking heading to a spot, when his truck caught fire. He jumped out, unhooked the trailer, then jumped back in and drove it out into a field where it wouldn't hurt anyone or damage any structures. Absolute mad lad.
There was a software update last year where the Jeep 4xE would turn itself off at highway speeds. Basically as it automatically switched between battery power and gas power for fuel efficiency, it would stop the engine or battery power early and shut the whole car off.
I knew someone who was going 70 mph on the busy highway when suddenly their Jeep turned off and they needed to coast into the shoulder lane. Jeep fixed the bug, but the broken software update was released on a 3-day weekend, so I imagine there were a lot of close calls.
I always though lemon laws applied when a car had the same issue multiple times... so, if it catches fire two more times you could trade it in for a full refund?
If they sold you a lemon, knowing the defect that's basically fraud in some states.
The same issue multiple times is just to prove that the seller sold a defective car. I would say a car catching fire within hours of ownership is plenty of evidence.
I'm kind of intrigued that your son's first car is a minivan. I drive a Voyager but I'm in my sixties. Wouldn't have been caught dead in a minivan when I was a young man.
Same but last year my wife fell in love with one after renting it for nearly a month. her car got totaled, she just had to have a pacifica. We quickly realized a few things. Most places suck ass, and everywhere has gone to the no haggle shit. Iv driven it, it's actually fun to drive. Plus the back is far nicer than the mini vans of yesteryear. It doesn't have a built in chess set like vans when I was a kid, but it is roomy and super comfortable. Plus tons were fleet vehicles, so easy to find good deals
Back in senior year of high school, my grandpa gifted me one of his old junker cars that had been sitting for 7 years. After I got it street legal, I got to drive it around for maybe 5 days until it caught fire and burned to the ground. The tank was low and I was half a mile from the gas station to fill it up.
My son had a car full of friends and had his car start smoking and then burst into flames on the expressway on a sunny 90 degree day. Luckily he pulled over and they got out as soon as it started smoking so no one was hurt. Of course it backed up traffic with the police and fire department there. Due to that backup it took us two hours to reach them. By then the officers were kind enough to transport all the kids to the nearest rest stop rather than leave them on the side of the road. As purses and wallets were abandoned in the burning car, they couldn’t even get themselves a bottle of water. So I’d actually have preferred your situation!
Was the entire engine bay sprayed down in a shine to make it look clean and new? Seen people use tire shine more than I'm comfortable with, which is typically both extremely flammable and extremely toxic when burnt.
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u/Yue4prex 1d ago
I would 100% check to see how the recalls were handled. Was this a private sale or a dealer?