2016 FORD ESCAPE TITANIUM VIN 1FMCU9JXXGUA92203

This Ford Escape Titanium was built in 2016. Under the bonnet is a 1.6-litre petrol engine. The gearbox is automatic, with four-wheel drive. Details for this car come from a single data source and may differ from its documents.

The recorded mileage is 94,940 miles. The figure is in miles and needs converting before it is compared with kilometres: one mile is about 1.6 km. A single figure proves little: what makes a mileage believable is a series of readings that rise steadily over the years. A service book or a folder of workshop invoices is the simplest place to find past readings.

When the car was recorded, it showed front-end damage. Two cars with the same damage label can be very different: one needs a few new parts, the other major work. Damage rarely stays where it is first seen: an impact can reach the mountings and airbags behind a panel, and water or fire the wiring and electronics.

When checked, the car could be started and driven under its own power. A key is on file for the car.

Title status in the record: salvage. A title like this is issued when repair was judged uneconomical or unsafe. If any work has been done on the car since, photos and invoices should show what was replaced.

A car’s history answers three questions: who kept it, how it was looked after and what went wrong along the way. The paperwork is kept by different bodies – registries, workshops, insurance companies and lenders – so the history of one car is spread across many places. From the outside, a car with a repaired accident and a car without one can look identical.

A petrol engine in good order starts cleanly, idles evenly and pulls without hesitation. The automatic gearbox needs its fluid changed at the manufacturer’s intervals, and invoices should show that it was.

The VIN is a 17-character code assigned at the factory: it identifies the manufacturer, the model and its variant, and ends with a serial number unique to the car. This Ford Escape Titanium has the VIN 1FMCU9JXXGUA92203. A VIN that differs between the documents and the car, or shows signs of tampering, is reason enough to walk away.

A VIN report shows what has been logged: earlier registrations, odometer figures, damage entries, branded titles and theft checks, wherever such data exists. No report is complete: a repair done privately and never claimed on insurance leaves nothing to find. A VIN check and a physical inspection answer different questions: the first says what happened to the car, the second what condition it is in now. The next step is to look up the history behind VIN 1FMCU9JXXGUA92203.