Hey, I've been looking for eclipses and I've come across a 97 RS with 73K miles. Anyways, I can get this for like 6,700 but the front bumper is kinda in bad shape. The line between the hood and the front bumper is NOT even, it slants. Also, there appears to be some touch up work on the bumper and there is some unevenness between one of the headlights and the bumper. Besides that the car looks great. The interior is perfect, and the rest of the body is good. I'm wondering how much it would cost to buy a new bumper and get it professionally painted (Stock Black to match) if I put it on myself. Will it look good? One other thing, the car has been in two accidents, one was definately minor, the other I'm not sure but no salvage title, airbags not deployed, etc. Any insights you can provide would be appreciated I don't wanna buy something that got messed up bad in an accident.

just out of curiousosity how do you know the bags weren't deployed? Take the car? I would suggest taking it to a shop and have them take a look at it and possibly see about getting in contact witht he previous owner.

Carfax says the airbags haven't, but then again I guess I really don't know. It's from a dealer so I can't exactly say here let me see if anythings wrong and if it is you can have it back.

Are you buying it from a dealer or a person? If you are from a dealer, I would ask them if they would pay to have someone else look at it (not their shop cuz they will prob say everythings ok). If it is individual, see if somebody you know knows about cars or whatever and they can look at it. I would do what ^^^ said and have it checked though. It is hard to trust carfax. I mean, if an accident is reported thru insurance, it will be on there but what if someone didnt report it and tried to fix it themselves. That is what happened to me. I bought a 95 GS REAL cheap (repo) and made them run a carfax and nothing came up on it so i figured it was fine. Well, later on, after multiple problems, i found out it had been in somekind of wreck and that aparently the person just fixed the stuff themselves Well, good luck anyway, with it-just some advice!!-Anna

-Anna (96 Eclipse GS)

http://www.cardomain.com/memberpage/474544

Yeah my headlight is out of alignment so I took everything off the front and found my frame in that area is crinkled. It's not horrible, but I need to do something about it. But my airbags never were deployed or anything. So you can fuck up the front without deploying them. Have a shop check it out.

Thanks for the help. Now I just gotta see if there's any way the dealer will let me have that looked at. In the mean time I get to go look at more eclipses!!!

since it's been in so many accidents.. offer like $5000 for it to cover cost of fixing. I wouldn't worry too much about anything cosmetic because you can usually fix that pretty cheap, but if the frame or structural integrity has been damaged, I wouldn't get it. I bought my 97 RS for around 6k from a private seller in great condition cept for 85000 miles hehe but the engine runs fine. I don't really like buying from dealers cuz you can get stuff from private sellers for wayy cheaper and they're usually more upfront about stuff that's wrong with the car. Anyway, offtopic but somewhat related: if you're looking to find the value of cars http://www.edmunds.com is a good place to start

ALSO check they mgith be selling you a 96 with a 97 bumper