Eight records that decide what a used car is really worth

Almost every used-car checklist is about metal: panel gaps, compression, whether the engine sounds right cold. That matters, and it is also the part a seller has had the most opportunity to prepare for. A worn car can be made to present well for an hour.

What is much harder to stage is a documented history, and that history predicts your ownership costs better than anything you will notice on a test drive. The eight records below are ordered so the cheapest, fastest checks come first. If one of the early ones fails, you have saved yourself an inspection fee.

1 · Registration, and whether the seller is on it

Start here because it is free, immediate, and it decides whether there is anything to discuss. The registration book should name the person selling you the car. If it names someone else, you are being asked to buy from an intermediary, and you need to know why before anything else happens.

An open-file car, meaning one sold on with a signed transfer that was never registered, is common and is not automatically fraudulent, but it means the paper trail has a gap in it that you will inherit. Every unregistered hop between the last recorded owner and you is a period nobody is accountable for.

2 · Chassis and engine numbers, physically checked

Match the numbers on the car against the numbers on the paper, in daylight, yourself. Not a photograph the seller sends you.

• The chassis stamping should look factory: consistent depth, even spacing, no filler or fresh paint around it.
• The engine number matters separately. An engine swap is not automatically a problem, but an undeclared one means the record in front of you describes a different engine from the one you are buying.
• Take clear photographs of both. If a dispute arises later, what you photographed on the day is worth considerably more than what you remember.

3 · Service history, and whether it is verifiable

Ask for the service record and then ask how it can be checked. There is a real hierarchy here, and it is worth being explicit about it rather than treating all records as equal.

Kind of record	How much it is worth
Confirmed by the workshop that did the work, with date, mileage and parts	The most reliable thing you will see
Invoices from a named workshop you can telephone	Good, and worth actually telephoning
Stamps in a book, no invoices	Weak. A stamp is easy to obtain and proves nothing about the work
The owner's own notes	Useful for understanding the car; not evidence
"It was always serviced on time"	Nothing

An owner who kept records is telling you something about themselves as much as about the car. Meticulous paperwork usually travels with meticulous maintenance.

4 · The mileage, read across sources

A single odometer reading is unverifiable. A sequence of readings is much harder to fake, because every dated document that records a mileage has to agree with every other one.

Lay out every mileage figure you can find (service invoices, inspection reports, insurance documents, tyre-fitting receipts) against its date, and look at the implied rate between them. What you are looking for is not a single wrong number but a period where the car apparently travelled far less than the ones either side of it.

5 · Accident and repair history

A repaired car is not a bad car. An undisclosed structural repair is a different matter, and the two are worth separating.

• Cosmetic panel work is normal on any car more than a few years old.
• Structural repair, to chassis rails, pillars or suspension mounting points, changes how the car behaves in the next impact, and belongs in the price.
• Paint thickness varies naturally across a car; what you are looking for is one panel dramatically out of step with its neighbours, or overspray in door shuts and under seals.

Ask directly whether the car has been in an accident, and ask it as a closed question. The answer matters, and so does how readily it comes.

6 · Outstanding finance, tax and challans

These attach to the vehicle or to the registration rather than to the seller's goodwill, which means they can become yours. Confirm token tax is current, ask whether anything is outstanding, and get the answer in writing alongside the sale note. A seller who is untroubled by being asked is usually telling the truth.

7 · The independent inspection, booked by you

Pay for it, choose the inspector yourself, and do it after the six checks above rather than before. The paperwork checks are free and fast; the inspection is neither. Running them in this order means you only pay for inspections on cars that have already survived the cheap tests.

An inspection report is a snapshot with a date on it. Read it alongside the service history rather than instead of it. The report says what is worn now, the history says whether that wear is consistent with how the car has been treated.

8 · The handover documents themselves

The last record is the one you create. At handover you want the registration book, a signed transfer, the sale note with both parties' details, and photographs of the chassis number, the odometer and the signed papers, taken on the day.

Complete the transfer promptly. Until it is done, the car is legally still someone else's, and anything the registration attracts is still pointed at them. That is exactly the situation the open-file problem in check one describes, now with you on the wrong side of it.

The four gaps that should end the conversation

Most problems are negotiable. These four are different, because each one means the record you are being shown is not describing the car in front of you.

• The seller is not the registered owner and cannot explain why.
• The chassis stamping has been disturbed, or does not match the papers.
• Mileage figures across dated documents contradict each other and the seller has no account of it.
• Structural repair that was denied and then found. The repair itself is priceable; being lied to about it tells you what else you have not been told.

Common questions