What to look for when buying a used car, in the order that saves you the drive

Most used car checklists start at the kerb, with a torch and a tyre gauge. That's the wrong end. By the time you're standing next to the car you've already spent an hour of your Saturday, and you're much more likely to talk yourself into it. Nearly everything that saves you money happens before you travel.

So this one runs in the order that actually protects you: the advert, the questions, the documents, the car, the drive, the money.

What should you look for when buying a used car?

In order: what the advert says, what the seller says, what the paperwork says, what the car looks like, what it feels like to drive, and how you pay for it. The first three are free, take about fifteen minutes, and rule out most of the cars that would have wasted your afternoon.

The car itself matters, obviously. But the sequence matters more than any single check, because every stage you skip is one you end up doing while a stranger watches you and wants an answer.

Stage one: read the advert before you travel

An advert tells you more than the seller intends, and it does it for free.

• The price against the market. Well under the going rate is not luck. It's a car with something in its history, or an advert that isn't real.
• The mileage against the age. Unusually low mileage for the age is either a genuinely cherished car or a fiction, and it's the easiest claim in the advert to test: every MOT reading the car has ever had is free to look up.
• The photos. Count what's missing. No engine bay, no interior, no shot of all four corners, or a car photographed on a bright day from one angle only, is a car being edited.
• The wording. "Spares or repairs", "sold as seen" and "just needs a sensor" all have specific meanings, and what used car advert phrases really mean goes through them one by one.
• The registration. If it's visible in the photos, you can check the MOT history, the tax status and the recall flag before you message the seller. If it's been blurred out on a private sale, ask for it, and treat a refusal as an answer.

Stage two: the questions to ask before you go

Ask these by message, before you arrange anything, because the answers are checkable and the written record is useful later.

1. How long have you owned it, and why are you selling?
2. Is it registered at your address, in your name? If the seller isn't the registered keeper, you need to know why before you travel.
3. Is there any outstanding finance on it?
4. Has it ever been an insurance write-off?
5. What's the service history, and have you got the invoices? Not the book. The invoices.
6. When was the last MOT, and what were the advisories? You can check the answer against the record while they're typing it.
7. Has the timing belt been done, and is there a receipt? On a wet belt engine this is the single most expensive question on the list.
8. Are there any warning lights on, and has anyone read the fault codes?
9. How many keys, and is there a locking wheel nut key?
10. Would you accept a bank transfer? A seller who insists on cash for a car worth thousands is telling you something.

A seller who answers all ten straight is worth the drive. One who goes quiet at question two or three has just saved you a tank of fuel.

Stage three: the documents

At the car, before you look at the car.

The V5C log book. It should carry a DVL watermark, and it should show the seller's name and address. It names the registered keeper, which isn't the same as the legal owner, so it is not proof the car is theirs to sell. GOV.UK publishes the serial ranges of blank V5Cs stolen from DVLA, and checking yours isn't one of them takes five seconds: how to check if a car is stolen has the ranges and what to do if it matches.

The VIN. Stamped on the car, usually visible through the base of the windscreen, and printed on the V5C. Match them character for character. If they disagree, stop, and don't negotiate.

The MOT certificate and the history. The paper certificate is the least useful of the three, because the free online record holds every test, every advisory and every mileage reading.

The service invoices. A stamp says somebody opened the book. An invoice says what was done, at what mileage, by whom. Where there's nothing at all, buying a car with no service history is about pricing that risk rather than walking away from it.

Stage four: what to look at on the car

Daylight, dry weather, and a cold engine. All three are negotiable to the seller and none of them should be to you: a warm engine hides a start-up rattle, and rain hides paint that doesn't match.

• Stand back first. Panel gaps that vary, a bonnet that sits proud, or one door a slightly different shade are the signs of repair work nobody wrote down.
• Tyres. The legal minimum is that "the primary grooves of the tread pattern must be at least 1.6mm deep within the central three-quarters of the breadth of tread", and below that the MOT calls it a dangerous defect. Look for four matching brands and even wear: odd wear across one tyre is usually alignment or suspension, and it's a bargaining point either way.
• Under the bonnet, cold. Oil level and condition on the dipstick, coolant level and colour, and any smell of burning or sweetness. Mayonnaise under the oil cap on a cold engine wants explaining.
• The cold start. Stand outside the car while they turn the key. Rattles in the first two seconds, a puff of blue or white smoke, or a diesel that takes several attempts are all worth more than anything in the advert.
• The dashboard at ignition. Every light should come on and then go out. A light that never came on has often been removed from the cluster, which is a repair in itself.
• Inside. Wear on the pedals, the steering wheel and the driver's seat bolster should roughly match the mileage. A 40,000-mile car with a shiny pedal rubber and a worn-through seat is telling you the mileage is fiction.
• The boot floor. Lift the carpet. Damp, a spare wheel well full of water, or fresh sealant is accident repair or a leak, and both cost.

The known faults for the model are the other half of this. A quick look at, say, Ford Focus known faults or Nissan Qashqai known faults before you go tells you what to prod first on that particular car, and roughly what it costs when it goes.

Stage five: the test drive

Twenty minutes minimum, radio off, and include a fast road. Five minutes round the estate proves nothing except that the car moves.

What you're listening and feeling for: the clutch biting near the top of its travel, a gearbox that baulks when cold, brakes that pull to one side or judder under firm braking, steering that wanders or clonks over bumps, a dual-mass flywheel rattling at idle with the clutch down, and a turbo that whistles or hesitates. On a diesel, get it properly warm: a car that's only ever done short trips is the one with the blocked DPF, and that's an expensive conversation.

Then, before you hand anything over, ask them to switch it off and start it again, warm. Plenty of faults only show up on the second start.

Stage six: paying, and what actually protects you

Your rights depend entirely on who is selling.

From a trader, consumer law gives you a 30-day right to reject a car that isn't of satisfactory quality, and no wording in the advert removes it. "Sold as seen" doesn't, and neither does "trade sale".

From a private seller, the duty that goods are of satisfactory quality applies only where someone sells "in the course of a business", so it doesn't apply to them. What does apply is the description: the car must be what they said it was. That's the whole reason the written questions in stage two are worth keeping.

Practical bits that cost nothing:

• Never pay a deposit for a car you haven't seen. That's the shape every online car scam takes.
• Pay by bank transfer rather than cash, so there's a record of who was paid.
• Get a receipt with both names and addresses, the registration, the VIN, the price, the date and the mileage.
• Tax it before you drive it away. Tax doesn't transfer with the car, and GOV.UK is blunt: "You need to tax the vehicle before you can use it on the road", and "You must have insurance before you can use your vehicle on the road".
• Keep the green new keeper slip and check the seller tells DVLA.

What can you check for free before you leave the house?

More than most buyers realise, and all of it from the registration:

What none of that covers is finance, theft markers and write-off records, which sit behind paid checks because the data is licensed per lookup. What a free car check actually gets you draws that line properly.

How our report does the first half for you

The honest part first: we can't look at the car. Nothing on this page replaces the cold start, the boot floor and the test drive, and no check of any kind sees whether the belt inside the engine is fit or the panel gaps line up. That half is yours, and it always will be.

What we do is the half you can do before you travel, and we do it in one pass. The free scan takes the advert text and the registration, reads the wording against the car's full DVSA MOT history, matches the car to the known faults for that model and engine, and gives you a verdict with the biggest single thing to worry about named. That's stage one and most of stage three, for nothing.

The Smart Check does stage two. It explains every finding rather than flagging it, prices the known faults for that exact car, and turns the lot into the questions to put to the seller with a figure to negotiate from, which is the list above but specific to the car in front of you.

So if there's a car you're thinking of driving to see, run the advert through the free scan first. It takes a minute, it's free, and the report upgrades on the same link later if you want the costs and the questions, so nothing's wasted if the answer turns out to be don't bother.

The checklist, in one screen