Lease cars and clocked mileage

[sonarbell]

How can you tell if a car has been clocked in its first 3 years of life ? Obviously there is no MOT to check. Not all people stick to the lease/mileage agreement and clock the cars before returning them.

[Blue Oval84]

You can't be sure, in fact even after then you can't.

My friend's garage used to MOT an X6, they were absolutely certain that the owner wound the clock back before each MOT, mainly because they had serviced it two or three times each year but it had only ever covered 10K or so when it came in for test...

I guess the safest bet is to buy an ex-rental or something, I find it hard to believe that Hertz have a man with a laptop come round every year and wind back the clock on all of their Mondeos.

[Hub]

An ex rental has probably had a harder life in 10k miles than a clocked lease car though!

[Blue Oval84]

So maybe the only solution is to buy new

Incidentally I suspect my Mondeo was probably a rental (ex-Ford Direct) and it's been fine...

[JimmyConwayNW]

You can't be sure but the majority won't be doing that sort of thing.

It's very hard even for he manufacturers to be able to prove.

[glasgowrob]

More common than you would think


Depending on the car the local mileage correction places will do it from £30 upwards

[Jimmyarm]

Blue Oval84 said:

You can't be sure, in fact even after then you can't.

My friend's garage used to MOT an X6, they were absolutely certain that the owner wound the clock back before each MOT, mainly because they had serviced it two or three times each year but it had only ever covered 10K or so when it came in for test...

I guess the safest bet is to buy an ex-rental or something, I find it hard to believe that Hertz have a man with a laptop come round every year and wind back the clock on all of their Mondeos.

SurelySurely they were stamping the service book and giving him invoices with the mileage on like every garage does ?

[Blue Oval84]

Jimmyarm said:

SurelySurely they were stamping the service book and giving him invoices with the mileage on like every garage does ?

I believe, IIRC, that he simply didn't hand over the service book for them to record any details in, and then would just pick and choose which invoices to put in the service history folder.

[Crusoe]

Most keys and computers log operating hours. Average 30 to 40 mph multiplied by the time switched on and see if it makes sence.

[DaveCWK]

There is a thriving network of garages openly offering mileage correction services and it's not because lots of people are replacing faulty dash clocks - It's rife.

Best way to avoid woud be I guess to buy a 3 year old privately owned car, a difficult thing these days.

[anonymous-user]

Hub said:

An ex rental has probably had a harder life in 10k miles than a clocked lease car though!

i have never seen any evidence of any car owner buying an ex rental and subsequent failure prematurely.

when i have had rental cars drive them normally, i think the proportion of people that abuse them is small in the scale of things.

[Baryonyx]

DaveCWK said:

There is a thriving network of garages openly offering mileage correction services and it's not because lots of people are replacing faulty dash clocks - It's rife.

Best way to avoid woud be I guess to buy a 3 year old privately owned car, a difficult thing these days.

Indeed, these 'mileage correction' businesses would go bust fairly quickly if all they were doing was fixing genuine errors. I've got an error on my Jaguar's clock, because the true mileage is around 160,000 but it had a replacement dash pod (I think) which has changed the mileage to 93,000. It's evidenced in the paperwork by looking at the MOT and service record and the notes on the clock change. Does it matter so much that I'd pay someone to correct it? No. If I did sell the car, I'd do as the previous owner did and advertise it with it's correct mileage and note that the odometer does not reflect the true mileage.


No doubt many a dodgy used car dealer makes use of their services though. Plenty of PH'ers have found their old cars for sale online showing considerably fewer miles than they had when they sold them! I once went to look at a Volvo S60 D5 with a mate at a used car dealer. Since I'd owned a 2.0 Low Pressure Turbo model I was just there to keep my mate right. When we got there, we asked if we could have a look at the D5 and were pointed in it's direction, advised that it was a bit dirty inside as it hadn't been prepped yet and the price wasn't decided on. I thought it a little odd that the price hadn't been decided on (surely that would be the first thing a dealer thinks of when he gets a car in?), but we had a look anyway. The car was reasonable but yes, in need of a good wash and hoover. Off we went, and my mate went back to look again a few days later. He remarked how the wash and hoover had done the car a world of good and that it seemed younger already - indeed, over a third of it's mileage had disappeared in the interim! It was now 'low mileage for the year' and worth considerably more than it was a few days ago when it had over 100,000 miles on the clock...