Clocking cars!!

Joined
20 Oct 2002
Posts
17,180
Location
In a house
I was idly looking through a modified motors for sale/swap group on facebook, and spotted a number of cars with very low miles for their ages, so curiosity got the better of me. I then found that almost every low mileage car on there was significantly clocked and a few of these were done recently!

I thought clocking was a dead thing now with online MOT checking, but people are still doing it. I suppose these cars are usually well sub 15k so likely to be being sold to very different market, but surely people check this stuff out before buying?

One was CLS 55 AMG Black, with a claimed 575 BHP @ nearly £16k, and it was clocked from 167833 in 2014 to 120130 in 2015!!

I was just very surprised, and just wanted to remind people to always check the mileage, even on modified sheds!
 
I saw a CTR on AT while I was looking and found one clocked from 176,000 miles to 65,000 miles :p
 
As Housey says, an awful lot of high end stuff is subject to a yearly trim such that it's undetectable. Mileage correction guys do good business.
 
I've carried out a few online MOT checks which reveals what looks almost certainly like a clocked car. However on cars with a private plate there can be some confusion when that plate has been transferred between vehicles and the online MOT checker isn't so hot with that.

Of course on a non-private plate there's unlikely to be any other explanation.
 
If anything you would think its actually easier than ever for them to clock cars mileage down with it been digital in modern cars now.
Back in the old days you could easily tell a clock had been wound back because they wouldn't line up correctly.
 
With the popularity of limited mileage lease deals it's probably increasing in frequency. Nothing motivates more than immediate and quantifiable financial impacts. Like throwing a spurious £3k whiplash claim in on the most minor of accidents, I fear it's becoming more accepted.

I’d be suspicious of any premium diesel which has allegedly only done 8k/year.
 
As Housey says, an awful lot of high end stuff is subject to a yearly trim such that it's undetectable. Mileage correction guys do good business.

That's quite worrying when you think about it, really. If someone gives their car's mileage a "yearly trim" before each MOT / service, who will ever any the wiser?
 
I always try and check invoices for work done as these log mileage, ive managed to spot a couple of clocked cars this way
 
My old FTO was still in kilometers so the history probably looked a bit strange as sometimes they wouldn't realise and enter it in miles.
 
I suppose its easier to do when your doing a lot of miles a year. Somebody who is doing 25k miles a year could easily wind that back to 10k miles a year before its took into a MOT or Service and it would still look realistic.
 
This is rife on PCP vehicles where you get penalised for going over the mileage stipulation. There's also no MOT to check against at this stage.
 
Back
Top Bottom