The first thing is to establish whether the car is indeed clocked or not. It is not impossible that the MOT garage entered 28000 when it had, for example, done 2800.

To find this out you can look at the complete MOT history, any servicing records etc.

Clocking a 28000 miles car back to 5000 is an unusual pattern. It is more usual to clock a car which has done, say, 140k back to 80k.

I would dispure that the majority of clocking is done by dealers who buy from auction. Some is, yes, but in actual fact the favourite place these days is by people leasing or PCP'ing cars on limited mileage contracts. There is a big difference between a lease at 10k a year than 25k so there is a very big incentive to take a 75k mile car back to 30k come end of lease time.

With regard to leasing ,the BVRLA rules ,insist on a car that's out on a lease ,to be serviced to the manufacturers specification ,the proof of that would be invoices and or a stamped service book ,they also charge for any additional wear ,and would identify any car that's been substantially clocked . From experience ,it's mainly dealers that clock cars ,to retail to naive buyers .

And that is another reason to clock them. Many cars do not need their first service until 2 years or 20k miles.

Get car on 2 year / 20k lease - do 60k in it, clock it to 19k and service it the week before you hand it back. All the paperwork stacks up. It happens a lot - I know of some companies with several cars who do it to all of them (allegedly!).

I would agree with Tony its very common to clock a lease car in the UK its rife here in Germany I could not believe how easy it was and in the UK there is no Mot till its 3 years old and lot of lease cars never see an agents they are serviced at Kwik Fit or the likes.