Many years ago, I bought a 2001 Cadillac DTS from a rebuilder in CA. The car was originally written off in GA. Once it was repaired in CA, I paid him about 30% less than what they were retailing for. I don't remember if the CA title showed it as a salvage or not, but when I moved to AZ and re-titled it here, the title was clean.
The downside is that whenever I took the car to a Cadillac dealership for any type of repair, they ran the VIN and said it was "branded", which meant they would not offer any warranty on any repairs that they completed. Also, at trade-in time, no dealer was interested, not even the "buy here pay here" lots. It ended up in the "cash for clunkers" program, but I did get a few good years of use out of it.