I bought my S2k a few months ago from a local Carmax. They provided the Carfax report, and nothing other than regular maintenance and service showed up on it. Lately I've nticed that the rear bumper definitely doesn't fit right, so I took it off, and bent the tabs back straight and put it back on. While the bumper was off, I noticed the mufflers have overspray on them, my license plate light does too. Also, my drivers side sideskirt is a different shade of red than the rest of the car.
Other than cosmetic problems, is there anything I should look out for mechanical? There aren't really any physical problems with the car that I can see, alignment is good, everything. But I'm worried that I might be overlooking a problem that might arise down the road.
And why wouldn't this sort of thing show up on a Carfax?

 

it wont show up on carfax if someone didnt report an accident to insurance/police, and just fixed it themselves.

 

If the car is still running strong and doesnt seem to have any problems with it, I wouldnt worry about it honestly. The reason it probably didn't show up on the Carfax is because it was never reported, so it was most likely light damage that they just paid with their own money to repair. Such as my S, someone hit my rear bumper in a hit and run and I just got a new rear bumper and had it re-painted. I have a $500 deductable so I bought and fixed it myself since it was cheaper for me to do it the way in my situation. So that will never show up on a carfax that my rear bumper was damaged, replaced (well it has an ap2 bumper now on my ap1 so it's obviously been replaced) and repainted.

 

Alright, it makes sense now. I won't worry then, she still runs strong, only 34k miles.

 

Coworker was rear ended and got it fixed through insurance about 1.5yrs ago. He carfaxed his car recently and it came up clean, no record of the accidnet...He traded it in and got another car. Take the report for what its worth...

 

I wouldn't worry.

Check to see if the VIN stickers are still on the rear bumper + trunk lid (see: http://picasaweb.google.com/msasges2/S2000VINs).

I bet it was a small fender bender and the trunk is still original. Depending on the shop, the bumper might even be the original.

 

For what it's worth, our 6 month old TSX got hit a month ago while parked. The person left about 6 seperate foot long scrapes on the rear bumper.

We had it resprayed at a high end shop for $650 and bypassed insurance - mainly to avoid the report showing up. There was no damage more than some scrapes so only damage done was the loss of thorn paint on tht part of the car.

 

The vin stickers are all there, it's all original. Its just that the bumper doesn't really fit right in some places. I might have to tinker with it a bit more.

 

That's even better than we expected. Your s2000 was not in a "wreck" ...

I guess the rear bumper was just repainted for some scratches/etc. as described above. Good on the body shop for keeping the VIN stickers.

You might also have the bumper alignment (some refer to it as a defect) issue that a lot of s2000s have (even new)... Do a search for it.

 

I believe Carfax has a guarantee policy that if you can find that the car was in an accident then they will buy back the car from you.