IAA sells a large share of the insurance write-offs in the United States, many of them to buyers overseas. If a car passed through an IAA yard, the intake photos and damage record from that sale are the clearest account of what happened to it. Enter the VIN to check.
Where the vehicle passed through an IAA branch, the sale date, lot details and the auction name, alongside any Copart or wholesale sales for the same VIN.
Images taken at intake, which document the vehicle’s condition before any repair. IAA publishes high-resolution sets, and the report keeps them after the listing is gone.
The damage categories recorded by the auction house, such as front end, side, undercarriage, flood or burn.
The recorded sale figure or final bid, where the auction reported it.
Whether the vehicle started and moved under its own power at intake.
The mileage recorded at auction and the title type the lot was sold under.
Enter the 17-character VIN from the windscreen, door jamb or registration document.
Vektracer searches the vehicle-history sources available for that VIN.
Review the free preview to see which records exist.
Unlock the full report when the records are worth reading.
Most IAA lots come straight from insurers that declared the car a total loss after a collision, flood, fire or theft recovery. The auction record is usually the most detailed account of that event that exists.
IAA lot pages are removed after sale. A history report keeps the photos, damage codes and price tied to the VIN, which is what a buyer needs a year later when the car is on a dealer lot in Poland with a fresh registration.
A primary code of "front end" with a secondary of "undercarriage" or "flood" describes a very different car from front-end damage alone. The secondary code is where the expensive news usually sits.
A vehicle that sold for a small fraction of its retail value was severely damaged, whatever the current seller says.
A car bought at IAA, repaired and returned to auction, or sold on to Copart, has two records. The earlier one shows the original damage; the later one shows the repair. Both belong to the same VIN.
Auction records only exist for vehicles that actually passed through a salvage or wholesale auction, which is a minority of cars on the road but a majority of cars exported from the United States as used. If the vehicle you are checking was never auctioned, the report will contain its accident, title, mileage, ownership and recall history but no auction section. Run the free VIN preview first to see what records exist for that specific vehicle before paying for anything.
See a full sample reportYou can check a VIN for previous salvage auction records. Where the vehicle was sold at IAA, the report shows the sale date, damage recorded, price and any lot photos captured at the time.
None. Insurance Auto Auctions trades as IAA; "IAAI" is the older name and the one most buyers still search for.
No. Vektracer is an independent vehicle history service. IAA is named here only to describe the kind of salvage auction records a report can contain.
Yes. Auction records are held by VIN regardless of the auction house, so a car that went through both IAA and Copart shows both sales.
Where the photographs were recorded against the VIN, yes. That is the main reason to look the car up by VIN rather than by lot number, which stops working once the listing closes.
Yes. The record is American wherever the car is now. The import hub explains what a European buyer should read in it.
That is exactly what an auction record exposes. Check the title history alongside it — a vehicle sold at IAA as salvage that now shows a clean title deserves close inspection.
Enter the VIN to see which records exist. The preview is free.