There are always so many risks when it comes to buying a second hand car that you need to do as much research as possible to try and find out the history of the vehicle before you buy it.

You may have doubts as to whether the mileage is genuine on a car you are looking at but there are a few checks you can do which will help you investigate. On average, most cars do about ten thousand miles per annum. If you have a ten year old car (not classic) and it is only showing a few thousand on the clock then this should ring alarm bells. If the owner has has the car from new they may be able to show you service history and receipt to back up the mileage.

Another check you can do is a HPI check, which is strongly advised and you can also pay extra to have a mileage check carried out. This will detail the mileage on MOT’s plus any declared mileage on a log book when the car was sold. It is now easy to check online to find past and present MOT’s. If the mileage does not match up it may have been wound back sometime in the past.

Physically there are also things that you can check for to confirm the mileage. If the interior quite scruffy or splits in the seats you can safely assume that it has been used a fair bit. This is also true for wear on the steering wheel and gear stick.