Looking for an NC Miata, figured I would try and do this right and check VINs before I pulled the trigger.
I found NICB (or NCIB or whatever it is) to see if it's been stolen or totalled, but I figured there's a wide range of berkery between those and a mint vehicle and it might not be the best
Yes, it's NICB.
None of the services are going to catch everything...in fact very far from it. I'd wager to say about 50% of accidents are NOT on the services. The ownership history can also come up a bit wonky. I've seen it at work a million times and experienced it personally...Carfax shows a car I've had for a while having been "sold" to a new owner, but in reality I just changed addresses. Having said that I think Carfax is probably the best of the bunch, as much as I hate to say it.
Basically, these are great tools to help start your research, but they are far from the be all and end all that they want you to think they are.
What vintage of NC? In my experience these systems are extra unreliable for into from the early 2000s. And the cheaper the car the less likely any damage is to show up on any report and the less it affects the price anyway. It's nice to know that it's not stolen or totaled, beyond that basically just give it a thorough inspection, if there's no signs of damage either it's never been crashed or it was repaired well enough that it doesn't matter.
In reply to dps214 :
Any vintage really. Wife had an '06 that was as close to a base model as you can get back when she was the gf, but I'm not looking for hers.
More looking at price, which is driving it. Trying to stay under $6k, which is difficult in this era, but I have a loan for a couple grand more if I need it.
I usually do carfax for peace of mind after a bad experience. While they don't report everything, it can still be helpful.
I bought a Silverado with around 120k on it. The truck was really needy and had a lot of little things go wrong. When I got fed up and finally sold it a potential buyer ran the carfax and we realized it probably had between 250-300k on the clock.
Having run both Carfax and Autocheck in a professional environment, Autocheck seemed to catch more auction announcements (structural damage, etc). That being said, I'll echo everyone else, I've seen hundreds of cars that were in gnarly accidents with a perfectly clean history report
I've used Vehicle History to at least get a rough idea of it's past and/or sales events, but you do get what you pay for (free) in comparison to the paid services.
Just checked that vehicle history one. I've been paid twice for hits on the drivers door/fender on my miata through insurance. Neither show up.
I also ran my wife's fit, it shows an outstanding alert that the airbag replacement has not been performed when it was already done.
It does accurately show "salvage" for the mazda 3 that got totaled a few years ago (completely smashed up irrepariable)
I’ve used a site called VIN.rip (you can Google it) that provides excellent VIN reports. It’s affordable and detailed
canoe?
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