How to Check the History of a Used Car

Vehicle history reports reveal a lot of useful information about a car. A vehicle history will show you, among other things, if the car is stolen, if it's been flooded or if it's been wrecked. You can also discover odometer rollback. In short, if you are thinking about buying a used car, learning a car's history will help you make an informed purchasing decision. The key to finding out all this history is through the car's VIN, an acronym that stands for vehicle identification number. It is a unique code that every vehicle is assigned. It's like a car's fingerprint.

Instructions

1

Ask the seller for the car's VIN. It will be a 17-character code.

2

Find the car's VIN yourself if the seller will not provide it. The VIN can be found on the vehicle's title and registration, on insurance cards and on the car itself. Look on the driver's side dashboard or on the inside of the driver's door frame when you open the door.

3

Find an online site where you can run a free VIN check to obtain the car's history. One such site is the nonprofit National Insurance Crime Bureau, also known as the NICB. (See the Resources section.)

4

Input the VIN number into the search form to obtain the car's history. On some sites, you can pay to run unlimited checks for a certain amount of time, useful if you will be checking several cars as you search. At the NICB, you can conduct five searches within 24 hours.