2017 NISSAN ROGUE SPORT SV VIN JN1BJ1CR4HW112639

This Nissan Rogue Sport SV was built in 2017. There is an automatic gearbox, with four-wheel drive. The fuel is petrol.

The record gives the mileage as 96,291 miles. Miles and kilometres are easy to confuse, and a distance in miles looks lower than the same distance in kilometres. 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. Some damage shows its consequences only later: corroded connectors and electrical faults can surface months afterwards.

When checked, the car could be started and driven under its own power. A key was present. Condition notes are a snapshot: the car may have been worked on, stripped of parts or left standing since.

The car carries a clean title. There is no salvage or similar mark, so the car was never recorded as a total loss.

Registrations, changes of owner, inspection results and accident claims together make up what is called a car’s history. A car’s paperwork is scattered: the registry knows about owners, the workshop about repairs and the insurance company about claims. 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. Many modern petrol engines are turbocharged and direct-injected; where they are, the turbocharger and injectors belong on a specialist’s checklist. The automatic gearbox should respond smoothly and without delay; jerks, slipping or hesitation on a test drive need investigating. A car with four-wheel drive has extra differentials and often a transfer case, which an inspection should cover alongside the engine and gearbox.

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. For this car, the VIN is JN1BJ1CR4HW112639. The VIN usually appears at the base of the windscreen, on a door pillar and stamped into the body, and all of them should match the documents.

What a history report can list depends on what has been documented about the car: registrations, mileage readings, damage, branded titles and theft reports. Paperwork is only as complete as the people who kept it, so a report with few entries lowers the risk without removing it. A professional inspection makes sense whatever the paperwork shows, because no report measures corrosion, worn bushes or a poor repair. For this 2017 Nissan Rogue Sport SV, the sensible next step is a history check on VIN JN1BJ1CR4HW112639.