Protecting yourself from buying a stolen car?

[chriswt]

After watch Cars Cops Criminals on the BBC the other night it got me worried and curious about how fool proof all the fake paperwork can be if you do your back ground checks.

Does anyone know where these guys get fake VIN numbers from, how they can match them up to a stolen car and what fake paperwork they produce?

If you:

1. Do an HPI check on Registration and VIN
2. Check VIN on web to see if factor options marry up with actual car
3. Check all paperwork to make sure it marries up together
4. Call a garage that’s stamped in the service book to see if they hold the car details

Surely you’d know if a car is legitimate or not?

What is the definitely checking procedure you should undertake to safeguard yourself against a stolen or cloned car?

 

[st4]

Buy from a Franchised dealer, you will have some form of redress if it all goes pear shaped.

 

[tromppost]

I think with a HPI check if the car is a ringer they do not pay out, because the info you give them is for a car that is not stolen or damaged.

 

[umedc]

Buy from a Franchised dealer, you will have some form of redress if it all goes pear shaped.

i always buy my cars from franchised dealer.

 

[Dieselman]

If you:

1. Do an HPI check on Registration and VIN
2. Check VIN on web to see if factor options marry up with actual car
3. Check all paperwork to make sure it marries up together
4. Call a garage that’s stamped in the service book to see if they hold the car details

Surely you’d know if a car is legitimate or not?

What is the definitely checking procedure you should undertake to safeguard yourself against a stolen or cloned car?

This is pretty sound advice, you can always tell a cloned car, they are usually not very well cloned.
VIN numbers ground out or stuck over the original, etc.

 

[chriswt]

This is pretty sound advice, you can always tell a cloned car, they are usually not very well cloned.
VIN numbers ground out or stuck over the original, etc.

But when you hear that these organised gangs are getting smarter and more sophisticated you start to wonder whether it really is that hard to detect a cloned car.

Would you say the horror stories on TV are due to people not doing the proper checks?


As for buying from a franchised dealer, its great in an ideal world but if the car you want is being sold privately you have little choice. Also you can save a fair bit by avoiding the dealers

 

[st4]

Depends on the value of the car. I'd be very uneasy about handing over £10k + to anything other than a Franchise. Thats how I feel and I may not be right if it all goes wrong I'd rather have a form of redress.

 

[chriswt]

Depends on the value of the car. I'd be very uneasy about handing over £10k + to anything other than a Franchise. Thats how I feel and I may not be right if it all goes wrong I'd rather have a form of redress.

Thats totally understandable but if its an older or rare car that still commands a high price you may have limited choices.

Franchise dealers aside; these TV programmes make you weary of everyone, Car Supermarkets and smaller dealers included.

I'm really just trying to establish what you should do to make sure that everything is genuine.

 

[st4]

I'm really just trying to establish what you should do to make sure that everything is genuine.

Everything you can. On a watch forum I was on I was told this rule "buy the seller, the product is an after thought". If you sense something is right, or your "reasonable" requests are being met with resistance by the seller then walk away.

 

[jaymanek]

Just dont buy off a guy selling from a farmyard in birmingham and you shouldnt go far wrong.
When buying a car from a dealer you have legal rights and so as ling as they are the type of company likely to be there in 6 months, nothing to worry about.

 

[chriswt]

"buy the seller, the product is an after thought".

Thats an excellent rule. Something I've often done when buying from Ebay etc. If the seller sounds even slightly offish or suspect I walk away.

 

[UnMarked]

This is pretty sound advice, you can always tell a cloned car, they are usually not very well cloned.
VIN numbers ground out or stuck over the original, etc.

Some are very well cloned indeed. Example being a Navara recently not only had cloned plates but cloned VIN on the dash and bulkhead. Even the V5 handed over would fool all but the most wary. The one to check is the engine number (admittedly not the easiest to get at) The crims struggle to falsify this as the 'donor' vehicle's engine number is difficult to obtain so they usually resort to grinding it (or parts of the number off) and re-stamping with a random number. A call to the relevant dealership should help in spotting this ruse.

 

[Dieselman]

Certainly on most late Mercs there are three areas for VIN, make that four with the windscreen one. It's difficult to mask them properly.

The ones on the programme just had extra plates over the top of the originals.

Good point about the engine number. Apparently if it's been ground off heating it should reveal the number as the metal is permanently bruised.

 

[glojo]

As for buying from a franchised dealer, its great in an ideal world but if the car you want is being sold privately you have little choice. Also you can save a fair bit by avoiding the dealers

I'm afraid you can't have it both ways, usually the bigger the savings, the bigger the risk.

There is certainly no need to buy from a franchised dealer but if you intend buying privately then it is very much a gamble. we can worry ourselves silly worrying about the 'what if' scenario and TV programs are all about sensationalising but if you don't buy from a dealer (any type dealer that has a recognised address) or a private buyer who has a land-line number which shows up on Directory Enquiries, then your taking risks. They might be little risks, but risks none the less.

Have you access to put a car up on ramps? I think most of the cloning we saw on that program was quite amateurish, but that documentation looked scary.

As far as I am aware it is all but impossible to actually hide an original engine number from forensic examination, or the hiding of any efforts to hide the attempts at removing the original number.

Regards
John

 

[chriswt]

This might be me being simple but if, for example, my CLK was cloned the criminal would have to find a VIN number that matched exactly with my cars spec and so that when I plugged it into a VIN checking website I'd find no descrepancies with the cars features, spec etc.

 

[Rory]

1. Do an HPI check on Registration and VIN

Do check all the T's & C's but I think HPI will cover you for most things (up to certain limits) but you must buy the car at the address on the V5 and you must not pay cash.