Buying a second hand car: Essential questions 7/11/07

This is a list of essential questions that you should ask when ringing to enquire about a used car. Have them written down in front of you so that you can obtain all the relevant information and sound confident when doing so. Obviously some of these will be in the advert already but it's better to confirm for sure as the ad wording may not be clear or could be misprinted. There is an alarming amount of second hand motors that are misdescribed and you need to know that the car ticks enough boxes over the phone before you waste time going to view it.

1. Mileage?
2. Full service history? main dealer? Do they have the log book &service record?
3. How many previous owners? (Does the answer include the current owner?)
4. M.O.T.? How long left?
5. Tax? How much left? Is it included in the price?
6. Any finance outstanding on the car?
7. Has it been in any accidents? I realise that not many people will answer this but it's worth asking, you never know!
8. Fuel type?
9. Manual or automatic?
10. Alarm/immobiliser? Factory fitted?

Of course there will be other questions that are specific to that car, optional extras, colour, etc but the above list covers the basics.

Here is the Citizens Advice Bureau's information on your rights as a car buyer:

Second Hand Vehicle Buyers Rights

Thats a great list R-R, if I could just add, the first question I always ask is:
"How long have you had the car?"
This question could cut through a lot of crap because If the response is "couple of weeks or months" I'd immediatly be suspicious since you could be talking to a trader posing as private seller or someone who bought a lemon and is now desperate to get rid of it. By all means probe a bit further, but by then I'm usually moving on to the next car on my list.