The first acquaintance with a car, which is located abroad, usually occurs through an advertisement on the Internet and photos posted in it. Of course, most of the offers look attractive, and the pictures do not show any flaws. Moreover, they will not tell the whole history of the car, which can be quite interesting, as we will show with a few examples found during the car history checks by VIN code from CEBIA.
The first example this time will be the premium sedan Audi A8, which, of course, looked like a completely normal car in the sales offer, without any visible remarks. This car was released in 2015, and then it left the showroom in Belgium. The next mention of this sedan already came from Romania, in 2018, at an auction, where the mileage was indicated as 254,000 km. True, there the odometer "rejuvenated" to 110,000 km, further — itʼs even more interesting. In 2020, an accident was recorded with the deployment of all airbags, and a little later, in 2021, the same car ended up in a river for some reason.
In a relatively short time, this inexpensive car has experienced one "twist" of mileage and was twice recognized by insurers as beyond repair, restored, and put up for sale again. Of course, at the market price. It is hardly worth buying such a car, knowing its full history. What, in the end, was decided by CEBIA customers, who ordered an inspection of this Audi A8, and subsequently went looking for another car, without such a "bright" past.
Checking the carʼs history, especially when the reports include photos, often helps you understand what youʼre dealing with without words. And is a specific option worth at least some money. In the following example, with the Skoda Karoq crossover, the photos are able to tell everything without comments. And so: the first photo is the condition of the car before, the second photo is after the accident and repair. Nothing is mixed up.
The same can be said about the next stylish city car Mini One. In the second photo, he is really stylish, but before that he did not look at all the same as in the first photo, which was obviously taken immediately after a rather serious collision.
Another example is the Skoda Octavia RS. Connoisseurs of the brand know what these two additional letters mean — you are actually buying a sports car in the body of a regular family station wagon. However, the capabilities of this "Octavia" are much wider than those offered in standard versions. That is why such options cost much more than the "basic" version. So what could the seller of this rather rare car be hiding? The inspection by CEBIA revealed that in 2018 in Germany this car was completely rear-ended, and according to the documents from the insurers, the repair cost was more than 34 thousand euros! At the same time, they recognized that it is not economically feasible to restore this car.
However, the "auto businessmen" from the Czech Republic did not agree with this, and already after 3 months they offered this "charged" station wagon in "almost new" condition, of course, forgetting to add to the photo gallery several photos from Germany, where the car can be seen immediately after the accident.
By the way, sports cars should be checked with increased vigilance, because not every driver has the experience of driving cars with powerful engines and specific settings of the suspension, steering mechanism and brakes. Therefore, relatively "fresh" cars from this family often get into an accident a few days after leaving the showroom. Maybe more than once. So, to make sure that you are buying a car with a clean history, do not forget to use CEBIA checksaccording to the VIN code of the car, which can be ordered on a special page , which is available in Ukrainian.
