VIN number and CarFax

[raneeshvijayan]

Here in the US, it is extremely easy to find the vehicle history. I just tried my car's VIN number in Autocheck.com (similar to carfax.com), it tells me pretty much everything since the car was first sold.

We were looking for a car for my friend, the odo said 86,000 miles, then we checked Carfax and found out, the car had 135,000 miles on it when it was serviced an year ago. Most of the service stations and insurance companies regularly feed the car data into a database (accidents, registration renewal, servcie etc...)

I was wondering is there any such initiative going on in India? If not, shouldn't we start that? The hostory information is very useful when someone wants to buy a used car.

Here is the report I got for my car,

AccidentCheck
Reported accidents: 0

Title and ProblemCheck
Your vehicle checks out!

OdometerCheck
Your vehicle checks out!
Last Reported Odometer: 114,000

Vehicle Use and EventCheck
Specific vehicle use(s) or events reported
-----------------------------------------------
Detailed History,

Vehicle: 2003 Chevrolet Malibu (1G1ND52J43XXXXXXX)


Event Date Event Location Odometer Reading Data Source Event Detail
12/10/2002 TUCSON, AZ 12 Motor Vehicle Dept. TITLE (Title #:9D00002344040) (Lien Reported)
REGISTRATION EVENT/RENEWAL
FLEET
RENTAL
TITLED OR REGISTERED AS A RENTAL VEHICLE, OR PART OF A RENTAL FLEET
6/11/2003 GLENDALE, AZ 10,886 Dealer Record VEHICLE IN DEALER INVENTORY
7/2/2003 PHOENIX, AZ 10,847 Motor Vehicle Dept. TITLE (Title #:086H003211003) (Lien Reported)
7/30/2003 PHOENIX, AZ Motor Vehicle Dept. REGISTRATION EVENT/RENEWAL
7/30/2004 PHOENIX, AZ Motor Vehicle Dept. REGISTRATION EVENT/RENEWAL
8/23/2005 PHOENIX, AZ Motor Vehicle Dept. REGISTRATION EVENT/RENEWAL
8/1/2006 PHOENIX, AZ Motor Vehicle Dept. REGISTRATION EVENT/RENEWAL
7/21/2007 PHOENIX, AZ Motor Vehicle Dept. REGISTRATION EVENT/RENEWAL
7/24/2008 AZ 80,000 State Agency PASSED EMISSION INSPECTION
8/1/2008 PHOENIX, AZ Motor Vehicle Dept. REGISTRATION EVENT/RENEWAL
11/1/2008 83,830 Independent Repair Center VEHICLE SERVICED
11/10/2008 OR 83,862 Motor Vehicle Dept. ODOMETER READING FROM DMV
12/31/2008 AZ 83,682 Motor Vehicle Dept. TITLE (Title #:BF04008366003)
1/23/2009 TUALATIN, OR Motor Vehicle Dept. TITLE (Title #:0902394870)
REGISTRATION EVENT/RENEWAL
5/26/2009 OR 93,000 State Agency PASSED EMISSION INSPECTION
6/15/2009 TUALATIN, OR Motor Vehicle Dept. REGISTRATION EVENT/RENEWAL
3/25/2010 SCOTTSDALE, AZ 104,716 Motor Vehicle Dept. TITLE (Title #:021D010084016)
REGISTRATION EVENT/RENEWAL
3/25/2010 AZ 104,000 Independent Emission Source PASSED EMISSION INSPECTION
4/1/2010 TUALATIN, OR Motor Vehicle Dept. REGISTRATION EVENT/RENEWAL
3/7/2011 AZ 114,000 Independent Emission Source PASSED EMISSION INSPECTION
3/23/2011 SCOTTSDALE, AZ Motor Vehicle Dept. REGISTRATION EVENT/RENEWAL
3/29/2012 SCOTTSDALE, AZ Motor Vehicle Dept. REGISTRATION EVENT/RENEWAL
4/3/2012 SCOTTSDALE, AZ Motor Vehicle Dept. REGISTRATION EVENT/RENEWAL

[ilangop]

Right now our system can only tell the Owner name and the year of registeration through SMS. That too vehicles registered / re-registered after the year 2000. All one has to do is to sms "vahan vehiclenumber" to 09212357123.
Ex: type vahan TN01A0123.
May be we can expect such sofistications in the coming years to track a vehicle's complete history.
-Ilango

[Arunshek]

Originally Posted by raneeshvijayan

We were looking for a car for my friend, the odo said 86,000 miles, then we checked Carfax and found out, the car had 135,000 miles on it when it was serviced an year ago. Most of the service stations and insurance companies regularly feed the car data into a database (accidents, registration renewal, servcie etc...)

You are right, Carfax is a trusted service used by people who buy pre-worshiped automobiles. Regarding your friend' case, looks like car has actual miles of more that 210K. On second thought, it ran 86K in a single year!!! ODO reset was not mentioned in Carfax?

Originally Posted by ilangop

Right now our system can only tell the Owner name and the year of registeration through SMS. That too vehicles registered / re-registered after the year 2000. All one has to do is to sms "vahan vehiclenumber" to 09212357123.
Ex: type vahan TN01A0123.
May be we can expect such sofistications in the coming years to track a vehicle's complete history.
-Ilango

The last update is that the Vahan SMS service just gives the registration details. they no longer reveal the owner details.