Can bad credit buy you a used car in America?

When I first knew Steve several years ago, all I knew about him was that he was an American expatriate engineer living in Malaysia because he was working in one of the multi-national companies in the Bayan Lepas Free Industrial Zone.

He spoke with a long drawl which both amused and distracted me initially. But when I got to know him better, Steve turned out to be one of the most colourful chaps that I had met.

He said that he was from Texas, the Lone Star state. People there, he used to tell me once, drove some of the biggest cars in the country. And some of the Texans changed cars so often that there was actually an active secondary market for used cars.

But he cautioned that one must definitely know where to go if one wants to pick up a decent second-hand car. No point picking one up from an unknown dealer who is not trustworthy enough.

“Say,” he drawled, “call me if you know of anyone going to Texas and needing to buy a used car near Dallas or Fort Worth. I can point him in the right direction: AutoUSA.

“This establishment sells used cars of decent qualityfrom their branches in Irving and Arlington. If you are looking to buy something reasonably affordable and reliable, their used cars Irving or Arlington branches should be your obvious destinations.”

If I'm not mistaken, the business also goes by the name of AutoUSA Texas. I came across this name once about two years back when I was doing an Internet search for a project on used cars. Even back then, they were quite established already and they always prided themselves as a provider of financing to prospective buyers who had a less than acceptable credit rating.

AutoUSA claimed a unique position among car dealerships because through them, people with bad credit now had a fair chance to own vehicles. In-house financing was available to those with damaged credit so that when AutoUSA sold them a used car, they also arranged financing. They were willing to take a chance on the buyers by extending credit to them.

It was rather coincidental that Steve and I happened to wander onto the same subject of AutoUSA and second-hand cars so long ago! Steve has since moved on to Singapore and I have quite lost touch with him. But in the few brief months we knew one another, yah, he was a small well of information on things Texan.