Bought it and regretted it: top cars where the mileage is most often tampered with

Are you looking for a reliable used car and hoping for honesty from the seller? Car market statistics are ruthless: the odometer readings of many popular foreign cars cannot be trusted. Hundreds of thousands of hidden kilometres threaten you with expensive repairs and huge overpayments. Find out which cars are the leaders in mileage tampering and how not to be deceived

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Buying a used car in Ukraine is still a lottery. One of the dirtiest but most popular schemes on the secondary market is the banal ‘twisting’ of the odometer. You think you are buying a new car, but in reality you are getting a lemon for which you have paid a hefty price. Based on recent analyses of used car inspections, experts have compiled a list of cars that you should be extremely cautious about buying.

Leaders in terms of frequency of fraud

The Toyota Avensis is the absolute champion of this anti-rating. Analytics show that more than 21% of the cars of this model that were inspected had signs of tampering with the electronics, and on average, a whopping 106,000 kilometres were ‘cut’ from their odometers. In second place, with 16.4% of cases of fraud, is the Mitsubishi Outlander. Rounding out the top three is the premium Mercedes-Benz E-Class, where the mileage was found to be false in 15.6% of cars. As we can see, a high-class car does not protect you from fraudsters.

Commercial transport

The frequency of tampering is one thing, but the volume of stolen kilometres breaks all records in the commercial transport segment. These cars are bought for work, they travel hundreds of thousands of kilometres, and before being sold, they mysteriously ‘rejuvenate’. For example, sellers of the Opel Vivaro roll back the odometer by an average of almost 152,000 kilometres. In such popular ‘workhorses’ as the Mercedes-Benz Vito and Volkswagen Caddy, the average amount of hidden mileage is also frightening and consistently exceeds 120,000 kilometres.

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Where is the risk slightly lower?

Among the popular cars on the secondary market, there are still models where sellers are less likely to engage in fraud. For example, only 10.8% of Citroën C4s showed signs of tampering. Analysts also include the Opel Astra and some passenger versions of the Mercedes-Benz Vito among the models with a relatively low level of risk.

Why is this dangerous and how does the scheme work?

Most often, such stories occur when importing cars from abroad. Unscrupulous sellers take advantage of the fact that there is no single integrated database between countries, and it can be very difficult to track the history of a car at the border crossing stage.

Buying such a car not only threatens you with a significant overpayment ‘for air’, which can reach thousands of dollars. You get a vehicle that is unpredictable in terms of maintenance, as its components are much more worn out than expected according to the regulations. And when the time comes to sell the car and the real mileage is revealed, its actual value will simply plummet. To protect yourself, never trust the numbers on the dashboard and be sure to check the car's history using its VIN code through available databases before making a deal.

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Reminder! The Kyiv authorities have expanded the support programme for veterans with disabilities, adding the possibility of receiving partial compensation for the purchase of a used car. The amount of payments varies from 320 to 665 thousand hryvnias depending on the type of car. Learn more about the terms of the programme, compensation amounts and the list of documents required for registration.

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