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How to Get a Vehicle History Report

While buying a used car, my girlfriend and I worried about the safety of the vehicle from a historical perspective. Had it been in any accidents? Had it sustained any major damage from the elements? Was it ever used as a taxi or rental car? The salesman brought us out a vehicle history report and it answered most, if not all, of our questions.

All of the items that appear in a vehicle history report can give you an idea of how safe the vehicle is. If a vehicle has been written off or severely damaged, then there is a higher risk of it requiring more maintenance to ensure overall safety. The frame of a car – or its chassis – can also show signs of fatigue and can weaken over time if it has been subjected to high impacts such as collisions or other kinds of accidents. Also, any car that has been used frequently, like a taxi or a rental, will be a more risky investment in terms of mechanical safety.

Thankfully, the report on the four-door sedan my girlfriend and I wanted to buy was relatively clean. The odometer had never been tampered with and it had never been stolen. It was owned by only one other driver and there had been no accidents reported. The salesman, wanting to really make sure we felt the car was safe, explained to us how to get our own vehicle history report.

Every car has a Vehicle Identification Number, or VIN. This is usually located at the base of the windshield or on the driver side door jam. It is a 17 digit number, unless the car was manufactured before 1981, in which case there is no information in any database for it. (If that’s the case you may want to take the car to a trusted mechanic to do a top to bottom inspection.)

Write down the VIN, head online and just search for “vehicle history report” or “vehicle title search”. The report generator will search a database, using the car’s VIN, and provide you with the vehicle report either by mail or electronically.

That’s it! It’s very easy and shouldn’t cost you more than thirty dollars. As an extra step you can search online for consumer safety reviews as well as crash test reviews. These are a good, impartial source of information concerning the safety of most cars.

The vehicle history report is one major piece of bureaucracy that exists, almost purely to promote safe driving practices. When a car is on the market waiting to be sold, this bit of paper can help the buyer (and the seller) arrive at a more accurate price range for the vehicle. When the car is owned, the report encourages the owner to drive more cautiously: it’s a lot harder to sell a car or get a good price for it if it’s been in an accident.

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Reference: Moving