Is the mileage real? Clocking and fake auction sheets on Japanese imports

Most Japanese imports went through an auction, and the auction sheet records the odometer on that day, written by an inspector who does not know who will buy the car. That figure is your mileage check. If the car shows less today than on its last sheet, or the readings go down from one sheet to the next, it has been clocked. The catch: it only works with the original sheet, not a copy someone sent you.

Why the Japanese record is usually good

Japan writes mileage down in more than one place. The vehicle inspection certificate records the odometer reading checked at each shaken inspection. Since January 2017, when that reading goes down, for example after a meter is replaced, the certificate also shows the highest reading ever recorded.

The auction houses police it too. The Japan Auto Auction Council runs an odometer management system that pools the mileage of cars listed at its member auctions, so a car that comes back with fewer kilometres stands out. USS inspection rules let the house mark a car as tampered, without the seller’s agreement, if the way the meter is fitted shows the reading is not real. The seller can overturn that only by proving otherwise.

The three marks next to the mileage

USS listing rules make the seller declare the odometer status on the sheet:

None of the three is a sale you should make blind. A # car can be honest, but you are paying for mileage nobody can prove.

Where it goes wrong: after the auction

The auction record is made before the car leaves Japan. The risk sits in the months between that sale and the advert you are reading, and in the copy of the sheet you are shown. What buyers run into, in general:

• A sheet with the grade or the odometer retyped. The layout looks right; the numbers are not the ones the inspector wrote.
• A cropped sheet. The top half with a good grade, without the repair box or the notes.
• A sheet from a different car of the same model, often from the same batch, where only the last digits of the chassis number differ.
• A car sold on after its first auction and put through again. Two sheets, and the dealer shows you the older, better one.

How to check, in order

1. Take the chassis number from the car itself (the plate in the engine bay) and from the export certificate. They must match.
2. Look the number up yourself. You get every appearance with dates and grades, including any the seller did not show you.
3. Open the sheets. Check the chassis number printed on each against the car, then read the odometer box and the marks beside it.
4. Compare readings across dates, and against the odometer now. They should only go up.
5. Ask for the export certificate and the last inspection certificate, and compare any mileage they record. Most countries need the export certificate to register the car anyway.

What the check on this site does

A record is listed as yours only when the archive matched your chassis number digit by digit. Cars from the same batch with a hidden digit go to a separate list, where you compare the inspector’s handwritten number yourself. When you open a sheet, the number is checked again against the full sheet, and a mismatch on a record the archive matched is refunded automatically.

Open two or more sheets of the same car and the document lines up the odometer readings by date. If the reading goes down between two auctions, it says so in red above the list. If a car was never auctioned, or went through a small house the archive does not cover, the check finds nothing, and that is said plainly too.

Reading the rest of the sheet (grades, damage codes, repair box) is covered in how to read a Japanese auction sheet.