A Salvage Title is issued on a vehicle damaged to the extent that the cost of repairing the vehicle exceeds ~ 75% of its pre-damage value.. This damage threshold may vary by state. Some states treat Junk titles the same as Salvage but the majority use this title to indicate that a vehicle is not road worthy and cannot be titled again in that state. The following ten States also use Salvage titles to identify stolen vehicles - AZ, FL, GA, IL, MD, MN, NJ, NM, NY, OK and OR.
A salvage title is an automobile title with a notation that the vehicle has been damaged in excess of approximately 75% of its previous market value. This notation gets applied to a title when an insurance company pays a total-loss claim on a vehicle, but then allows the owner to retain or buy back the vehicle at its post-damage market value, which is often negligibly low. Often a vehicle is still safely driveable even if technically considered a total loss by an insurance company, particularly with older vehicles where even minor cosmetic damage would cost more to fix than the vehicle's whole market value.