What a pre-purchase inspection finds

A test drive tells you how a car feels for twenty minutes. It doesn’t tell you what is underneath it, what has been repaired, or whether the seller actually owns it outright. Those are the three ways a used car purchase goes wrong, and two of them are cheap to check.

What a test drive cannot tell you

A test drive tells you how a car feels on a twenty-minute loop in traffic. That is genuinely useful, and it is also the easiest part of a car to make look good for an afternoon.

What it does not tell you is what is underneath, what has been repaired, or whether the car legally belongs to the person selling it. Those are the three ways a used car purchase goes badly wrong, and none of them shows up at the kerb.

What is a PPSR check?

The Personal Property Securities Register is a national register, and a search costs a couple of dollars. You need the VIN, which is on the compliance plate and usually on the registration papers.

It tells you whether there is a security interest recorded against the car, which in plain terms means money owing on it. This is the one that surprises people: if you buy a car with finance still owing, it can be repossessed from you even though you paid for it. Written-off and stolen information comes from state road agencies and police.

Buying privately from someone who turns out not to own the car outright can cost you the car and the money. Against that, the search is the cheapest thing you will do all week.

What does a pre-purchase inspection check?

The car has to meet the same safety standards any registered NSW car does, so an inspection starts with the things that are checked every year anyway: tyres and tread, brakes, steering and suspension, lights, windscreen and wipers, seatbelts, exhaust leaks, oil leaks, and rust in the structural parts like sills, floor, subframes and seatbelt anchorages.

Then there are the things that are not about the standard at all, and matter more when you are buying:

• Signs of repair. Panel gaps that don’t match side to side, overspray, fresh underseal in one area, bolts that have been turned.
• Corrosion that is starting rather than finished. Surface rust in a structural area is a future bill, not a current fail.
• Fluids and leaks. What is weeping now becomes what is dripping in a year.
• Warning lamps that behave. A dash that lights up and then clears is telling the truth. One that never lights up at all has often been got at.
• Wear that doesn’t match the odometer. A worn pedal rubber, a shiny steering wheel and a smooth driver’s seat bolster on a car with low kilometres is a conversation worth having.

Where the odometer fits in

Mileage rollback is not extinct. It is easier on digital clusters than people assume, and the giveaways are physical rather than electronic: interior wear that doesn’t match the number, service stickers and logbook entries that jump, tyres and brakes worn beyond what the reading suggests.

A service history that can be checked against a workshop is worth more than a folder of receipts. Ask who serviced it and whether they can confirm it.

What an inspection does not do

Worth being straight about this. An inspection is a point-in-time assessment by someone who did not build the car and cannot see through metal. It reduces risk. It does not eliminate it, and nobody honest will tell you otherwise.

It also is not a valuation. It tells you the condition. What that condition is worth against the asking price is your call, though a clear list of what needs doing is a reasonable thing to negotiate with.

Questions worth asking the seller

The answers matter less than how readily they come.

• Who has serviced it, and can that workshop confirm the history?
• Has it ever been in a crash, and was it repaired through insurance?
• Is there any money owing on it?
• Why are you selling it?
• Is the rego current, and when is the next inspection due?

A seller who answers plainly and hands over the logbook is a different proposition from one who talks around it. You are not conducting an interrogation, you are watching how the story holds together.

Doing it in a sensible order

1. Run the PPSR search before you spend any more time on the car.
2. Ask for the service history and the registration papers, and check the VIN on the car matches them.
3. Drive it, cold if you can. A car that has been warmed up before you arrive is hiding a cold start.
4. Get it inspected before you pay a deposit, not after.
5. Use what comes back either to walk away or to talk about the price.

A mobile inspection suits this well, because the car is usually at the seller’s place and you have no right to take it anywhere. We come to it and you get the findings.

You can book a pre-purchase inspection, and our guide to what fails a pink slip covers the safety standards a used car will have to meet anyway.