How to check foreign cars

How to check foreign cars

Author
Discussion

Suggs

Original Poster:

393 posts

283 months

Tuesday 30th April 2002
quotequote all
A friend of mine is planning to buy a second hand German registered car (already over here) and have it registered at DVLA on English plates etc. How can he check whether the car was nicked in Germany or not? He's asked the police and called the DVLA, neither can help him. If it turns out that the car was stolen then he could lose it outright and, obviously, wants to avoid that. Any ideas?

CeeGee

157 posts

271 months

Tuesday 30th April 2002
quotequote all
I did something similar recently - buying a LHD 993 originally registered in Berlin. In the end, I had to take it on trust that car hadn't been nicked abroad but as the car had been in the UK for 4 years and had 2 previously registered owners, on balance, I thought the risk was pretty low.

Is the car newly arrived in the UK or has it been here for a while? If it's the latter, you should be relatively safe - if it's the former, the only thing I can suggest is trying to contact the previous owner in Germany through the servicing garage that will be listed in the log book. The garage stamps normally have a telephone number attached - don't know how good your German is though?

CeeGee

ps if there are any German PHs reading this wondering where their silver 993 went to when it was nicked 4 years ago, it was a different one, OK?