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The pitfalls of buying used cars – ASM’s new infographic

  Thursday, 29 September 2016

At ASM Auto Recycling, we pride ourselves on running an online used car parts store that’s as good as any you’ll find anywhere.  Great quality parts, at even better prices.

But, not everyone who works in the used car market is as trustworthy as us.  To help raise awareness of the potential pitfalls that come when purchasing used cars, we’ve created this brand new infographic chockfull of useful information.

Some of the most interesting things we’ve taken a look at are:

• Clocking.  The average UK car does between 10,000 and 12,000 miles each year, and mileage is one of the main things people look at when working out how healthy a car is.  So (unfortunately) it was almost inevitable that less-than-scrupulous individuals would work out a way of ‘clocking’ a car – that is, reducing the mileage displayed on the dashboard.
• Cloning.  This is a technique where a vehicle is fitted with stolen number plates taken from an identical vehicle with the aim of deceiving cameras or rendering vehicles untraceable.  This might sound like a rare occurrence, but it’s really not: about 1.75 million of the 37 million vehicles in the UK are estimated to wear cloned plates, and more than 100,000 plates are stolen each year.
• Cut & shut.  A cut-and-shut vehicle consists of two or more cars which are welded together to form one. With 500,000 cars being written off each year, there is a lot of opportunity for individuals to take advantage of wrecked vehicles in order to make a profit.  Remarkably, one out of every four vehicles checked by HPI has been written off.

As well as some of these main pitfalls, we’ve also taken a look at some of the ways in which you can protect yourself when purchasing a used car, taking in everything from:

• How much wear and tear the car’s suffered – everything from the steering wheel to the carpets to the pedals - can suffer from visible wear-and-tear.
• Checking out the full history of the car at hpicheck.com
• Checking out the car’s current MOT certification at www.gov.uk/check-mot-history
• Checking the car’s mileage at www.motorcheck.co.uk/faqs/car-check-for-clocked-mileage
• Ensuring you take a look at the car’s VIN number, which will often display signs of tampering.  This will usually be found on a small plate riveted under the bonnet, stamped on the chassis or sometimes in the door pillar or on the base of the windscreen.

Please use the code below to add this infographic to your site

              
<p><strong>Infographic created by www.asm-autos.co.uk</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://www.asm-autos.co.uk/blog/the-pitfalls-of-buying-used-cars-asms-new-infographic/"><img src="https://www.asm-autos.co.uk/storage/ASM_infographic-800.png" alt="Clocking, Cloning, Cut'n'Shut" /></a></p>

            

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