statistical distrubution mileage vs age?

Yep, I completely forgot. A middle class gift from the guv picked from my hard earned Tax money...

So many perfectly nice cars were scrapped so that rich people could buy brand new cars. What a waste that was.

Probably even easier to hack.

I don't understand why the DoT doesn't bung a university department £50000 or so to complete a study on clocking, letting them have previous owner, MOT and any other mileage tracking data.

So,for example, the researchers simply phone the previous owner/keeper and ask them for mileage details, and check this against ads, sales, transfers etc.

I'd have thought an ongoing project of this kind would more or less stop clocking.

I can see problems with this.

When a car is sold, or more usually traded in, it passes through a number of hands before a new owner is found. How do you identify the culprit?

Many car owners have no idea of what the mileage of a car they have disposed of would have been. These days, cars are just another appliance.

How would the information about previous ownership and contact details be obtained without breaching data protection rules?

I don't actually think that clocking is a problem on the scale it used to be. I would not be put off a vehicle just on the basis of a higher than normal mileage as they tend to do huge mileages nowadays, and I'm sure I'm not alone, so clocking is not needed to the same extent.

I know of a VW T4 on an '03 plate that now has 320,000 miles on the clock. Apart from service items, it has had a broken engine mount and some worn front suspension parts replaced. It also had the ECU repaired after an ill-advised attempt at jump-starting when the battery was flattened. Everything else is original - injectors, pump,clutch etc. It gets serviced pretty well however.

Chris

There is that. I bought a very high miles BMW E34 at auction - direct from the lease company, with FMDSH. For a decent price. Ran it for a year or so, and traded it in for a 2 year old E39 at a main dealer. When negotiating the deal, the salesman phoned up a trade contact to see if they wanted the E34 as it was too high miles for a main dealer to sell.

A few weeks later, saw the old E34 in a local car park - looking very good after obviously a good valet and some paint repairs, and spoke to the new owner. Who complimented me on the condition ;-) Can't remember how but managed a look at the miles. It had lost 100,000 in a couple of weeks.

I'm not sure how that works exactly, but surely not beyond the grasp of a competent researcher. As in this case:

It would at the very least be possible to estimate the scale of the problem. And really, if the chain know such checks take place, they're far less likely to clock?

I wonder if Dave told the new owner?!

I've been thinking about it as I bought a S/H car a year or so back that covered about 15,000 a year in its first 3 years, and 500 in its 4th. Used that fact alone to knock £1000 off the price, which brought it well into the high mileage price category (immaculate FSH 2010 Civic GT R, £8000). So it ended up as a calculated risk.

Having said all of this, there's nothing stopping the new owner trying to contact the last recorded keeper. Simple matter of a phone call if traceable, or letter/SAE.

I did used to hear regular stories of clocking as the keepers tried to keep within contract mileage. Just overhearing in the pub type talk, but by all accounts it was trivial and cheap, and almost as routine as a service.

Some years back (late 90s), my brother bought a 3 year old 7 series with about 200,000 on the clock. Paid buttons at auction. Absolutely mint condition, with nothing I could see, down to the pedals, switchgear and seats, to indicate such high use. Very refined to drive with no rattles and everything seemed tight.

The only things that really showed the milage on this E34 were a worn front seat, stoned chipped bonnet, and stone chipped windscreen. I replaced the seat covering (fabric) with a new BMW one - easy enough job which made it look like new. Replaced the screen too - as it was nightmare in the dark. The place that my dealer passed it on to had the bonnet resprayed, I'd guess. So the car looked like the 40,000 miles or so now on the odo.

It wouldn't be difficult to keep records so clocking could be traced, especially with newish cars which were in the dealer network for servicing. As they keep a record of the actual mileage when serviced.

I didn't. He was so pleased with it would have served no purpose.

Sampling bias. The cars you see on motorways are more likely to be the ones doing higher mileages. Older cars tend not to be driven as much, since they trickle down to people who don't have a need for as much motorway driving. While they do appear on motorways, you see less of them. So compare the motorway with the contents of Tesco's car park, and you might find more of the older cars at the latter.

It's also easier to distinguish 20th v 21st century cars via the registration so you make that distinction, while 10 years ago you might not have more obviously noticed the difference between (A-H) and (J-Y, 51-55) plates.

Theo

If it is a new (ie pre-first MOT) then it will probably have a service history. Thereafter the milelage at MOT is publicly available.

The service history if on computer isn't available to a subsequent owner. A service book is all too easily altered or 'lost'. Just like the odometer.

On 02/08/2015 14:20, Theo Markettos wrote: So compare the

You may also have to choose the supermarket or you will get more sampling bias. My local Aldi car park appears to only cater for those who drive 1 to 3 year old 4x4s.

There is a box on log book "15" that can be filled in when selling a car. "6" for transfer to a dealer. Bet they kick the side of your new car in for that.

What I did was just an observation, for what's worth; not a scentific statistics. Although repeated patters interests me, what else can keep me amused on long motorway journeys. Then a cream coloured open top Jag XK120 roadster came along, what elegance, what beauty. Make me think how horrible the new generation of cars are looking. A Mercedes CLA makes me vomit at the sight. Perhaps it is the brutality of the shape which is the selling point? But brutality and beauty does not combine. Maybe I'm just getting old...

A former teacher of mine told us that his then girlfriend would marry him if he had one of these. Well on his salary he couldn't manage that but after sometime he came into a small inheritance and then got the car and in turn got the girl..

Sting in the tail was within three years of being married she pissed of and left him for someone else and managed in the divorce proceedings to take the XK120 with her!..

Poor sod seemed to me he never quite got over that event!....

Very true. There was one at the Ace Cafe meeting last month - and unusual in that it was still drum braked.

Looked just super.

A bloke I used to work with was a permanent bachelor, he had his own house and several classic cars that he kept in literally concours condition, nothing too fancy, but nice interesting cars that looked as they had in the showroom. He found love at about the age of 45, within a couple of years of marriage she had left, taking him for everything, the cars were all sold, along with the house and he was reduced to his racing bicycle and a pokey flat. Talk about a rinsing.

You can see why fathers for justice get up to what they do;!(.

I don't think any young man with any capital assets should get married it's a minefield when it goes wrong.

The marriage clauses act needs a very bad overhaul but no government has the guts to touch it...