Wow sounds like a pain in the ass in other states. Here's something California actually has that's easier. I get vehicles all the time that have a lienholder listed. Sometimes the lien is paid off but the owner failed to go to dmv and remove the lien from the vehicle's record. As long as they have the title that the bank gave them I'm golden. But usually people lose the title so instead of dealing with banks and notaries and lien releases it's just easier to attach my own lien to the vehicle.
There's companies out here that you send the vin and license plate info to and they do the lien for you through the DMV. It takes 15 days if it's a junk vehicle that is getting scrapped, or 30 days if you want to have the option of reselling the vehicle to a private party. You also specify what day you received the vehicle and how much your towing and/or storage charges are per day. As long as no one objects (never happened in 4 years I've been doing this because no one wants to pay the storage fees among other reasons), then after the time passes, your lien supersedes the old lien and the vehicle becomes yours to do whatever with.
There's other reasons to do a lien sale on a vehicle as well. Some examples include vehicles with no titles or registrations indicating the previous owner, or there's been so many transfers that some names in the paper trail are missing from the paperwork present. Out here there's titles on every vehicle no matter what year they are.
Anyway, I've had a bank call me once or twice during the lien process but they've never came for the vehicle. I think it was just to gather information to write the vehicle off as a loss.