Vehicle checks
How to Verify a Car's True Mileage
Mileage directly impacts a car's value. Unscrupulous sellers 'clock' (reduce) the mileage to artificially inflate the price. Fortunately, MOT records make this much harder to hide.
1. Look for the Drop
The most obvious sign of clocking is an MOT history where the mileage suddenly decreases. For example, passing with 85,000 miles in 2021, but passing with 42,000 miles in 2022. While occasionally this is a genuine dashboard cluster replacement, it's usually fraud.
2. Kilometres vs Miles Mix-ups
Sometimes a sudden jump or drop is just tester error. If an imported car's odometer reads in kilometres, but the tester enters it as miles, the history will look wrong. Check if the numbers roughly convert (1 mile = 1.6 km) before accusing the seller.
3. The Flatline
If a car's mileage barely changes for a few years, but it's passing MOTs, ask why. Was it stored in a garage? Was it a second car? If the seller claims it was their daily commuter, but it only did 500 miles last year, something doesn't add up.
Verify mileage on a vehicle
Use Kermo to turn the information in this guide into a practical vehicle or fuel check.
Verify mileage on a vehicle