2002 GMC YUKON VIN 1GKEC13T52R202280

This GMC Yukon is a 2002 model. The fuel is petrol. Power reaches the wheels through an automatic gearbox. The specification is taken from the source data and has not been checked against other documents.

The record gives the mileage as 202,547 miles. A clock converted from miles to kilometres should be documented, since the swap can hide the true mileage. Services and inspections note the distance covered, so a car with an ordinary past builds up a trail of figures that climb year after year. Title paperwork often notes the mileage at each change of owner, which makes it a useful cross-check.

In the source data, the main issue is damage from vandalism. The damage type is a short label: the extent of the damage and the quality of any repair still have to be judged on the car.

A key was there when the car was checked. Condition notes are a snapshot: the car may have been worked on, stripped of parts or left standing since.

Registrations, changes of owner, inspection results and accident claims together make up what is called a car’s history. The paperwork is kept by different bodies – registries, workshops, insurance companies and lenders – so the history of one car is spread across many places. What a car has been through is seldom visible at first glance, and a respray can make even a badly damaged car look sound.

A cold start, the colour of the exhaust smoke and any oil leaks tell a mechanic a good deal about how an engine has been treated. On a petrol engine, a rough idle, misfires or a warning light on the dashboard need looking into. The automatic gearbox needs its fluid changed at the manufacturer’s intervals, and invoices should show that it was.

The ninth character of the VIN is a check digit calculated from the other sixteen, so a mistyped or invented number does not add up. The record gives the VIN as 1GKEC13T52R202280. 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. The absence of an entry is not proof that nothing happened; it may only mean that nobody wrote it down. However complete the paperwork, only an inspection shows the condition of the body, suspension, brakes and electrics today. The next step is to look up the history behind VIN 1GKEC13T52R202280.