[Jeroen]

It is a huge business. There are a couple of things you can do yourself. The best thing is to research the car history. There are various options in the USA, you pay $10-15 or so and you will get whatever has been collected or has been known about the vehicle.

I bought a so called CarFax report in 2009 prior to buying my Jaguar.

Here are some pages of the report giving some feel for the level of detail;









So the report tells you the car has had two owners, one a lease company. And the current owner is the second owner.

The title history is relevant, it is also guaranteed by Carafe. Certain things are reported mandatory (i.e. fire, flooding and so on)

The detailled history provides a lot of information. All dated and mileage shown.
It also shows you all maintenance and inspection done.

You can read through all of it and it is a lot of information, detailled and it makes sense. There are no big gaps in maintenance, mileage per year and so on.

This was 2009 and those days these reports were not always necessarily 100% correct. Primarily because not everything gets reported. And as the video shows it is possible to tamper with the information in these reports as well.

Even so, it is probably the best protection/verification prior to buying a vehicle. I also called the dealer listed to verify they knew the car. Obviously, these days, they can’t give you much detail because of privacy concerns, but most will give you a reply if they have serviced the car and how often / for how long.

Some second hand dealers in the USA provide these reports free of charge with every second hand car you buy from them.

The system here in the Netherlands is a lot more detailled and reliable. It is virtually impossible to mess with the odometers anymore. Because it will always show up. Caveat is imported cars, because of course, there is never a known history know, prior the vehicle arriving in the Netherlands.

You can and should also check the maintenance/service history. Be aware there is a roaring trade in fake maintenance/service history documentation. So always best to call those garages mentioned in the maintenance/service booklet or carfax report.

Jeroen