Consumer rights when buying a used car
The Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives a short-term right to reject a faulty car bought from a trader, and almost nothing when you buy privately. What the …
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Buying guides
The checks worth doing before money changes hands on a used car in the UK, and what the law gives you afterwards: MOT and history checks, emissions zones, vehicle tax, consumer rights and finance.
Most of what goes wrong with a used-car purchase was knowable beforehand. The vehicle’s test history is published. Whether it is taxed, what emissions standard it meets and whether it has an outstanding safety recall are all free lookups against a registration number. Whether it is recorded as stolen, written off or still on finance costs a few pounds to establish and is the single highest-value check there is.
These pages set out what each check tells you, where the official version of it lives, and what the law does for you afterwards — which depends heavily on whether you bought from a trader or from a private seller.
General information only. None of this is legal or financial advice, and rules, charges and tax rates change. Every page links to the official source; confirm the current position there before acting on it.
Buying a used electric car
Battery state of health replaces compression, warranty transferability replaces the cambelt question, and on some early cars the battery was leased …
Diesel, petrol or hybrid: choosing on how you drive
The choice is decided by journey pattern rather than by fuel prices. Particulate filters need long runs, hybrids reward stop-start driving, and the …
Vehicle tax on a used car
Vehicle excise duty does not transfer with the car, the rate depends on when it was first registered as well as on emissions, and electric cars are no …
Euro standards, the ULEZ and clean air zones
Diesel cars need Euro 6 and petrol cars need Euro 4 to drive in the London ULEZ without a daily charge. What the Euro standards are, where to find a …
The viewing and the test drive
What to look at, in what order, and what to insist on: daylight, a genuinely cold start, a drive long enough to matter, and the tyre and brake checks …
The V5C and the rest of the paperwork
The log book is not proof of ownership, and forged and stolen V5Cs are how cloned vehicles get sold. What DVLA says to check, including the serial …
What a vehicle history check actually covers
Often called an HPI check after one provider. It covers what the free government services do not: theft markers, insurance write-off records, import …
Reading a car's MOT history
The MOT record is free, public and goes back to 2005. It shows recorded mileage at every test, failure reasons and advisories — which together tell …
Buying a used car: the order to do it in
The sequence that catches the most problems for the least effort: free lookups before you travel, a paid history check before you commit, and a proper …
Written-off cars: what the categories mean
Cat A, B, S and N explained — what may lawfully return to the road, what a category does and does not tell you about repair quality, and where it …
Mileage and clocking: reading the numbers
Why a recorded mileage can be false, what the free MOT history actually proves, and the physical checks that no database performs.