The used car inspection checklist we run 172 times before listing

Ask ten dealers what their inspection covers and you will get ten different answers, most of them describing a walk-around, a fluid top-up and a drive to the end of the road. That is not an inspection. It is a wash.

A real one takes hours, happens on a lift with the wheels off, and produces photographs. Here is what ours covers, in the order it happens, and which parts of it you should insist on wherever you end up buying.

1. The car goes up before it goes anywhere

Almost everything expensive is underneath. Corrosion on the subframe, a weeping differential, a bodged exhaust hanger, uneven tyre wear that tells you the geometry has never been set since a kerb strike — none of that is visible from a forecourt. The wheels come off, the car goes up, and the underside is photographed.

• Subframe, sills and floor pan for corrosion and previous repair
• Suspension bushes, drop links and shock bodies for splits and leaks
• Brake disc lip and pad thickness measured, not eyeballed
• Inner tyre edges — where the wear that betrays bad geometry hides
• Every fluid seal: engine, gearbox, differential, power steering

2. The panels get read like a document

Paint depth is measured across every panel. A repaired wing is not a problem in itself — it is a fact you deserve to know, because it changes what the car is worth and what it tells you about how it was driven. Consistent readings across one side and a spike on one panel is a repair. Spikes everywhere is a respray, and a respray on a five-year-old car is a question.

A repair disclosed on day one is history. The same repair discovered in month two is a dispute.

3. The drivetrain is tested under load, hot and cold

This is where the most expensive surprises live, and where the shortest inspections skip. A gearbox that flares between third and fourth will do it under load at operating temperature and behave perfectly at idle in a bay. So the car is driven cold, driven hot, and driven through the full range of shifts under throttle.

• Cold start: listen for rattle in the first three seconds, which is timing chain or oil pressure
• Full shift range under load, both up and down
• Torque converter lock-up and release at steady motorway speed
• Clutch bite point on manuals, measured against where it should be
• Turbo spool and shaft play where fitted

4. The electronics are scanned, not guessed at

Every module is read for stored and pending fault codes. Pending codes matter most: they are the faults that have not yet lit a dashboard light, which means they are exactly the ones a seller can honestly say they have never seen. Readiness monitors are checked too — a recently cleared ECU is a red flag with a perfectly innocent explanation about half the time.

5. Battery and hybrid pack health, measured

On a hybrid or an electric car the traction battery is the single most expensive component and the one most listings stay silent about. State of health is measured and published. A pack at 90% after three years is healthy. One materially below that is not a disaster, but it is a price adjustment, and you should see the number before you agree to anything.

The four checks buyers most often skip

1. The spare, the jack and the locking wheel nut key. All three missing is common and all three cost real money to replace.
2. Air conditioning tested for output temperature, not just for cold air. A system that is halfway to empty still blows cool on a mild day and blows warm in August.
3. Every electric window, mirror, seat and the sunroof, cycled fully both ways. Motors fail at the end of travel.
4. The service history against the mileage, date by date. Gaps matter more than totals.

What to do with the report

The point of an inspection is not a clean bill of health. Every used car has something. The point is that you see the something before you pay, priced into the car, in a photograph — instead of finding it yourself on a wet Tuesday in month two.

On every car we list, the flagged items appear as close-up photographs in the listing itself. If a dealer will not show you theirs, that is your answer.