Car history research
 

Hello all,

Wanted to share lessons learned researching my new 02 XKR.

Called Jaguar of North America - they would not discuss the car. After a five minute hold, an irate call center person raised their voice at me. Not happy, Bob.

Found that publicdata.com will reverse engineer the VIN and give prior owner name and address.

Googled this address to find local Jag dealers. Called those dealer service departments. Found the one that had serviced the car, and they they gave me the most recent visit. Believe the service advisor was authorized to give more but was "reluctant to proceed." :)

Bought the car, and drove down to the selling dealer. They no longer had the POs (since they had been purchased by another dealer), but they printed screenshots of all the service.

Found that Carfax and Autocheck collect different information. Saw a Porsche 911 with frame damage declared at a car auction. The owner didn't know until they tried to sell it on Ebay and Autocheck reported it.

Searched for the VIN in Google's history (using "cache:" keyword), looked at the datestamp on the pages to see how long the dealer had the car.

Searched Ebay history for the VIN to see what high bid was in prior auctions. Since dealers probably shill their own auctions, this may not be a reliable market indicator.

Good luck,

Yes, it's both confusing and far too vague for the consumer. You'd think this would be one place the government would step in and create a "truth in" law that goes further than veruifying the VIN and mileage. Even used cars are big purchases today, and so much can be hidden.

I would like to see a required history that shows mileage, known maintenance, wrecks and ownership trail of course, and then make sellers put a minimum of the mileage in their CL and other ads. I think the dealers reluctance to give maintenance history on cars already gone from the P.O. is ridiculous. Privacy ends where my money is at risk.

I hear ya.

One problem is that each state has its own standards and requirements WRT to what needs to be reported, was constitutes a "lemon" or a "salvage vehicle", etc etc.

Not that I wanna start a big hairy socio-political debate but, yes, this is an issue where a 50-state standard would be helpful ...but probably impossible to achieve in today's political environment where consumer protections ( *especially* if they come from the federal gov't) are considered anti-free market, anti-American, anti-business, over-regulation, etc etc






What's "CL" ?







I can give you numerous reason why it isn't. Some of the reasons, though, are much better than others :-)





Well, no, actually it doesn't. :-)



Cheers
DD