Free preview · from the dealership side of the desk
Many people assume odometer fraud died with mechanical odometers. It didn’t. Digital odometers can be rewritten with tools that plug into the car, and a modern rollback leaves no scratched screws or misaligned numbers. NHTSA has estimated that hundreds of thousands of vehicles are sold each year with false odometer readings. A car showing 78,000 miles that really has 160,000 costs you thousands up front and more in repairs it was never priced for.
From the appraisal side, mileage is one of the biggest numbers on any used car’s value, which is exactly why it gets faked. The good news: mileage leaves a trail. Free tip: line up the mileage on every service record, inspection and history entry you can find; a reading that goes backward is a red flag. Below: how rollbacks happen today, which cars get targeted, a worked example of what one costs, the three checks that catch most of them, and what to do if you already bought one.
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In the full guide
- How odometer fraud works today
- Which cars get rolled back
- Worked example: what a rollback costs you
- Check 1: the mileage trail
- Check 2: does the car look like its miles?
- Check 3: the car's computers
- If you've already bought a rolled-back car
- What to say
- Your game plan
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