Germans call it a getarnter Totalschaden, the Dutch talk about the Litouwse route, Ukrainians search for пригнані авто з США, Spaniards ask qué comprobar en un coche importado de Estados Unidos. The car is the same: an American car, repaired somewhere, registered locally, sold with paperwork that begins on the day it arrived.
Two things: the date of first registration abroad, and the VIN. The first character of the VIN says where the car was built (1, 4 and 5 are the United States; 2 is Canada; 3 is Mexico). Position ten is the model year. Everything else about the car's life before it arrived is absent, because every European registry issues a fresh document at first local registration and none of them imports US title, insurance or auction data.
Dutch and Swedish investigations describe the same pattern. A car is totalled in the US and sold at Copart or IAAI. It ships to Lithuania or Poland, is repaired, and receives a local registration. It is then sold westward, sometimes through Germany, to a buyer in the Netherlands, Sweden or Norway as a "one-owner import". Larmtjänst found that 61% of model-year 2007 and newer cars imported into Sweden via Lithuania had a US damage history. Autoblog.nl reported 39.4% of US-origin cars in the Dutch register had carried a salvage title. The registration document at each step is genuine. The history is simply not on it.
Salvage, rebuilt, flood, junk, wherever they were applied, and the state that applied them.
Copart and IAA sales with intake photos, damage codes and price, which document the original damage before the repair you are now looking at.
In date order, so a cluster swap or a rollback shows as a break in the sequence.
Rental, fleet, lease, taxi or police registration in the US.
Police-reported collisions and open safety recalls.
German buyers can rescind a sale for a concealed total loss; consumer-law firms specialise in exactly this. Dutch and Nordic buyers have comparable protection from dealers, less from private sellers. Eastern European buyers often have little practical recourse. In every case the dispute turns on what the American record said at the time of sale, so the moment to have it is before the sale, not after.
Clean, salvage, rebuilt, flood, junk. Issued by a US state, invisible in every European registry.
How it is checkedCopart and IAAI intake photos, damage codes and sale price, from every sale the car went through, not only the current lot.
How it is checkedReadings at US titles, registrations and inspections in date order. A reading below an earlier one is a rollback.
How it is checkedYes. A new car exported from the US has a short American record, and the report will show that quickly and cheaply. A car described as imported new that turns out to have three years of US registrations and an auction sale is the case the check exists for.
It is on the windscreen plate at the base of the glass on the driver's side, readable from outside. If a seller refuses to let you read it, walk away.
The structural and electrical consequences of a flood or a heavy collision do not expire. The US record is the only account of what was damaged, and it stays relevant for the life of the car.
Yes. Canadian provincial records and any earlier US history are in the same report. Canada has its own version of this problem: many Canadian used cars were themselves imported from the US.
Enter the VIN to see which US and Canadian records exist. The preview is free; the report is $19.99, once.