VIN or license plate Check Before You Buy

The report gathers, in a single document, everything the seller is not required to tell you. It is built from more than 1000 international databases and is ready about 40 seconds after the VIN check.

• Mileage readings recorded over the years — and the jumps that expose tampering.
• Declared accidents and damage, with photographs whenever the records hold them.
• Theft records from national and international databases.
• Number of previous owners and how long each one kept the vehicle.
• Factory specifications and equipment, so you can confirm the car is what the ad claims.
• Market price valuation, so you know whether the asking price makes sense.

Reading it is simple: start with the mileage timeline, confirm the readings only ever go up, and match each record against the documents the seller showed you. Then look at the declared damage and ask yourself whether the asking price already accounts for those repairs. All of it for less than the cost of losing a deposit — or paying for a repair that was never yours.

Mileage fraud is not a technical detail: it is money leaving your pocket at the moment of purchase. According to a 2018 European Parliament study, buyers of used cars with falsified mileage pay on average 26.3% more than the vehicle is actually worth.

Run the numbers on your own case. On a car advertised at €15,000, that gap is around €3,900 — dozens of times the price of a history report. The same study estimates that odometer tampering costs European consumers between €1.31 and €8.77 billion every year.

And the damage does not stop at the purchase: a car carrying 70,000 more kilometres than it shows needs servicing sooner, has more worn components and is worth less when you come to resell it.

This is not a problem imported from other markets. According to a carVertical study covering Oct. 2023 to Sep. 2024, 2.2% of the cars analysed in Portugal had falsified mileage, with an average deviation of 70,694 km — close to three years of driving wiped from the odometer.

More recent data from the same company, between Jan. 2024 and Mar. 2026, shows diesel engines leading tampering in Portugal at 4.6% of analysed vehicles, followed by petrol cars at 3.6%.

There is one more warning sign worth knowing: according to 2025 carVertical data, cars with damage records are 1.7 times more likely to have manipulated mileage (5.9% against 3.5% for vehicles without damage). Whoever hides a crash tends to hide the kilometres too.

Even before ordering the report, there are clues to watch for in the ad and during the viewing:

• Wear that does not add up: steering wheel, pedals or driver’s seat worn out on a car with low declared mileage.
• A service history with gaps, or a maintenance book that is incomplete or "lost".
• Mileage far below average for the vehicle’s age — roughly 15,000 to 20,000 km a year is normal.
• A seller who dodges questions about the VIN, the previous plate or the country of origin.

A large share of the used cars on Portuguese roads were imported — mostly from France and Germany. And here is the problem almost nobody explains: the IMT, the ASF and the vehicle registry only know the Portuguese chapter of the car’s life.

If the vehicle crashed, burned, was written off or had its mileage altered before entering Portugal, none of that appears in any national search. The car arrives with a new plate and a clean past — on paper.

The VIN is the only identifier that follows a vehicle from the factory, in any country. That is why the VIN check is essential when the ad says "imported", when the car has few declared owners but high mileage, or when the plate is recent and the model is not.

One detail confirms the origin without relying on the seller’s goodwill: the first two characters of the VIN identify the country of manufacture, and the international history shows which markets the vehicle was registered in and for how long. If the car spent years abroad and has only had a Portuguese plate for a few months, the answers you need are in that earlier period.

A history report is not only for walking away from a bad deal — it is for closing a good one on better terms.

Documented structural damage, a mileage inconsistency or more owners than declared stop being your suspicions and become facts on the table. With those facts, asking for a lower price is no longer haggling; it is an argument.

Use the data concretely: get a repair quote for the damage the report reveals and put that figure on the table as the basis for the discount. If a mileage inconsistency shows up, you also have a legal argument — selling a vehicle with a tampered odometer without declaring it is a misleading commercial practice under Portuguese law.

In practice, a single successful negotiation pays for the report many times over. And when the history comes back clean, you gain something just as valuable: the certainty that you can go ahead without second thoughts — and a solid argument when you resell the car tomorrow.

A VIN always has 17 characters made of capital letters and digits. If you are looking at the car in person or have the documents at hand, you will find it in one of these places:

• In field E of the registration certificate (DUA) — the fastest and most reliable source.
• At the base of the windscreen on the driver’s side, visible from outside.
• On the driver’s door pillar or sill, on a plate or sticker.
• In the engine bay or near the spare wheel, depending on the make.
• On motorcycles, stamped into the frame, usually near the steering head.

If you do not have access to the car yet, start with the license plate: it is enough to begin the check.

You cannot always ask for the VIN before seeing the car, and that is fine: the check also works from the Portuguese license plate. Enter the plate, the system identifies the vehicle and returns the report in about 40 seconds.

For domestic vehicles, the plate is enough. For imported cars, insist on the VIN — it is what links the vehicle to the foreign history that a Portuguese plate, issued here, cannot reach.

The best moment to run this check is before the viewing, not after. You arrive already knowing what to ask, you avoid driving out to cars that are not worth your time, and you are not at the mercy of a seller pushing to close the deal the same day. If you are comparing several ads, check them all: the cost of a few reports is trivial next to the value of the purchase.

Keep exploring: used cars · how to buy · sell your car