2009 NISSAN MURANO LE VIN JN8AZ18W99W100282

This entry is for a 2009 Nissan Murano LE, finished in brown. The car runs on petrol. Power reaches the wheels through an automatic gearbox. Every figure for this car is given as it appears in the source data.

At the time of recording, the car had covered 178,333 miles. The instruments count in miles; the same distance in kilometres is about 1.6 times the figure. The number on the clock proves little by itself; earlier figures logged at services and inspections are what make it believable. A service book or a folder of workshop invoices is the simplest place to find past readings.

In the source data, the main issue is damage to the right front. Whether the damage has been repaired since, and how well, is not something a damage entry can show.

When it was checked, the car could not be driven. An engine that will not start could have a simple electrical fault or internal damage, and only diagnostic work can tell which. No key was present.

Title status in the record: non-repairable. A title like this is issued when repair was judged uneconomical or unsafe. A branded title follows the car through every change of owner, so it remains part of its history.

Registrations, changes of owner, inspection results and accident claims together make up what is called a car’s history. A car’s paperwork is scattered: the registry knows about owners, the workshop about repairs and the insurance company about claims. What a car has been through is seldom visible at first glance, and a respray can make even a badly damaged car look sound.

For the engine, the service history matters most: oil changes, filters and the timing belt or chain are the entries to look for. Many modern petrol engines are turbocharged and direct-injected; where they are, the turbocharger and injectors belong on a specialist’s checklist. On a car that does not run, the automatic gearbox cannot be judged on the road; the colour and smell of its fluid and a diagnostic scan give the first clues.

The ninth character of the VIN is a check digit calculated from the other sixteen, so a mistyped or invented number does not add up. This Nissan Murano LE has the VIN JN8AZ18W99W100282. A VIN that differs between the documents and the car, or shows signs of tampering, is reason enough to walk away.

What a history report can list depends on what has been documented about the car: registrations, mileage readings, damage, branded titles and theft reports. No report is complete: a repair done privately and never claimed on insurance leaves nothing to find. A VIN check and a physical inspection answer different questions: the first says what happened to the car, the second what condition it is in now. The next step is to look up the history behind VIN JN8AZ18W99W100282.