Inspecting a Car Yourself

First and foremost, does the paint match? If every panel is a different shade of red, for example, the car has been in several accidents. If the paint is fresh and new and all the same colour, the car has been in a big accident and has been rebuilt. If just part of the car has fresh paint, for example the bonnet, it may merely have had a minor scrape or been repainted because it was badly stone-chipped.

Other tips for looking for signs of repaired accident are to peel back bits of rubber trim and look for 'tide marks' underneath, to open and close all the doors and check for even shut lines, to look under the boot carpet for fresh paint and a lack of the usual manufacturer's stickers, to look under the bonnet at the inner wings and on the engine, gearbox and suspension, for flecks of spray dust, to crouch down in front of the car and look for ripples in its sides. It's not that hard, is it?

One final tip: when a front wing is replaced it is resprayed in situ and they don't usually make much of a job of the section hidden behind the closed door. Feel the paint there, and if it's rough the car's had a new front wing.

Except on Mercedes and older small Fords, rust is less of a problem than it used to be and paint is now so expensive it's simply not worth filling a car with pudding and giving it a 'blow over'. But if the car is getting on, check all the usual places - round the wheel arches, under the valences (if they're steel), round the edges of the boot floor, under the carpets if they will lift, in the bottoms of the doors, round the headlights and along the outer tops of the doors.

Next job, check the tyres. Uneven wear may be due to incorrect alignment settings, or it may be due to bent suspension components from kerbs, pot holes or road humps. So be particularly wary of uneven front tyre wear. Check the nearside front wheel for rim damage. Has it got a new wheeltrim? Does the wheeltrim match the others? Are all the wheeltrims wrong? (A cheap set of four costs less than one correct wheeltrim from a franchised dealer.)

You've done paint and tyres. Now on to the interior. Dirt cleans off, but tears in the seats and broken bits of trim are notoriously difficult and expensive to put right. One fag burn can be invisibly repaired using new techniques, but a lot of fag burns will cost you £50 each and the repairs won't be invisible. If the entire interior stinks of tobacco smoke you'll be up against it to get rid of the lingering odour. Has there been a dog in the car? Has it scratched the paint? Has it left a smell? Don't feel you have to be polite about this to the car's owners, however nice they may be. It's your money they're after, not your friendship.

Open the bonnet and check all the fluids. Makers like Ford very helpfully paint yellow all the things you need to check. But what you want to look at is the oil on the end of the dipstick. Is it up to the mark? What colour is it? Castor-oil yellow is excellent; light brown is good; dark brown is okay; a tar-like black in a petrol engine spells disaster, though lubricating oil in all but the latest HDI diesel engines will always be black.

Unscrew the oil filler cap. If there is a deposit of whitish or creamy-grey 'mayonnaise' underneath, it means one of two things. The car has led a life of very short runs from cold starts, has never warmed up properly and the condensation this has created has mixed with the oil. Engines run like this have less than a quarter of the life of engines run properly, so a little old lady's car with 10,000 miles on the clock has really done the equivalent of at least 50,000 miles and should be valued accordingly.

The second problem 'mayonnaise' can reveal is a blown cylinder head gasket. It may be straightforward to replace this, or the head may need to be skimmed because it has warped. This gives the car a higher compression ratio and may mean that it simply won't run on 95Ron unleaded petrol. Have a look under the radiator cap or in the radiator expansion tank for similar emulsion to confirm the problem, and also look for white smoke (steam) from the exhaust.

Have a look at the condition of the power steering fluid. It should be red, not black. Same goes for the automatic transmission fluid (most autoboxes have a dipstick). It is a good idea for automatic transmission fluid to be changed every two years (essential with CVT automatics). It is also vital that the ATF level is kept up to the mark.

Look under the car for leaks. Is there oil on the vendor's driveway? A leak from a cam-cover gasket is common and no big deal, but a bad oil leak from a cylinder head gasket means the head has to come off and, if it does, manifold studs may break and stretch bolts will have to be replaced. A leak from the timing belt cover is bad news because it means that the camshaft end seal or a jackshaft seal has gone, contaminating the timing belt - so you won't just need a new seal, you'll need a new belt. If the gearbox/final drive is leaking from an output shaft seal, the lack of oil in the transmission may have led to premature wear.

Now ask to see the service history. Not a book full of stamps; the actual bills for all the work on the car that the owner has paid for, or, if a fleet car, a computer print-out of its service history. If, from this, you find that the car has been 'overserviced' (had its oil and filter changed every 4-6 months), then be willing to pay more for it than the guides suggest. If, on the other hand, it has been 'underserviced' (with gaps of more than a year), then pay substantially less than guide price. If the car has a timing belt rather than a chain, in general this needs to be replaced every 60,000 miles or every 4 years, whichever comes first. On some cars, such as Fords with Zetec engines, the replacement cycle can be pushed to up to 5 years or 80,000 miles whichever comes first, but no longer. If the service bills don't show a timing belt change, then budget £60-£200 to have it done. (The job is more expensive on Peugeots and Citroens because there is an engine mounting in the way.) Automatic transmission fluid should have been changed every 2 years; brake and power steering fluid every 3 years, but every two years if the car has ABS (most now do). If the car has a manual gearbox and the oil in that was changed within its first 18 months on the road, this is a valuable plus point worth paying more for.

You have now made a number of checks that will have provided you with a lot of information without having to pay anyone. Now we'll get onto the road test of the car.

The road test