Every register, and what each one tells you

Outstanding finance — Experian

Roughly one in three used cars on the market has been bought on finance at some point. If an agreement is still live, the lender — not the seller — legally owns the vehicle, and they can repossess it from you after you've paid. Your report lists the finance company, agreement type, agreement number, start date and term for every live agreement recorded.

Insurance write-off — MIAFTR

When an insurer decides a vehicle is uneconomic to repair, it is recorded on the Motor Insurance Anti-Fraud and Theft Register with a category and loss date. We report the category, the date of loss and the cause where it is recorded.

• Cat A — scrap only. The entire vehicle must be crushed, including parts.
• Cat B — body shell must be crushed, but salvageable parts may be reused.
• Cat S — structural damage, repaired and legally back on the road.
• Cat N — non-structural damage, repaired and legally back on the road.
• Pre-2017 vehicles may show the older Cat C and Cat D markers instead.

Stolen marker — Police National Computer

Vehicles reported stolen and not yet recovered carry a marker on the Police National Computer. Buying one means losing both the car and your money — a stolen vehicle is returned to its rightful owner or their insurer with no compensation for you.

Mileage anomalies — MOT and trade readings

Clocking is still one of the most common used-car frauds, and modern digital odometers are trivial to alter. We collect every recorded reading — MOT tests, service entries and trade records — put them in date order and flag anything that goes backwards or jumps implausibly. Every reading is plotted so the pattern is obvious at a glance.

Keeper, plate and colour history — DVLA via Experian

The number of previous keepers and the date of the last change tell you how the car has been used. A private plate transfer can hide a vehicle's earlier history from a casual search, and an unexplained colour change is often the fingerprint of accident repair.

Import, export and scrap markers — DVLA

Imported vehicles can have specification differences, thinner service history and lower resale values. An export marker means the DVLA was told the vehicle left the country. A scrap marker or Certificate of Destruction means it should never legally return to the road.

Safety recalls — SMMT

Manufacturers issue recalls for safety-critical defects, and the work is free at a franchised dealer. Many used cars are sold with recalls still outstanding simply because nobody checked. We report the outstanding recall count and the affected components.

MOT history — DVSA

Included free on every check. Every test, pass or fail, with the mileage recorded on the day, the failure items and the advisory notes. Advisories are the single best predictor of what will cost you money in the next twelve months.

Valuation and specification

Trade-in, part-exchange, private sale and dealer forecourt values, plus the factory record for the car itself: its full DVLA technical specification, the derivative it was built as, the equipment every car of that derivative left the factory with as standard, grouped by category, and the original list price. The derivative is looked up on the registration, not matched to a car that merely resembles yours — if we cannot identify it exactly we withhold the equipment list and say so rather than print another vehicle's spec. To be clear about what this is not: it is the standard specification for the model, so it does not tell you which optional extras were ordered on this particular car, and it excludes paint and upholstery because those were chosen per order. Most manufacturers do not publish a per-vehicle build record at all, and we would rather leave optional equipment out than guess at it.

See it on a real car

Every section above is published in full on our sample report — a genuine check on a real 2021 BMW Z4, registration EV03LOP, not a mock-up. It scored 57 out of 100: the finance and stolen registers came back clear, but MIAFTR recorded a Cat S repairable structural write-off in April 2026 at 26,162 miles. That is exactly the kind of thing a seller has no obligation to mention. The VIN is the only thing we have hidden.

What a check cannot tell you

We are honest about the limits. A history check cannot detect accident damage that was never claimed on insurance, a badly executed repair, mechanical wear, or a car about to fail its next MOT. It tells you what is on the national record — always view the vehicle, check the V5C and VIN match, and consider an independent mechanical inspection before buying.