The car sales market is in full swing which means ‘this is the season to step back the odometer, according to CarFax. The company, which compiles vehicle history reports from various touchpoints over the vehicle’s life, says its research shows that more than 1.9 million vehicles on the road have had their odometer tampered with. That total represents a 7% increase from 2021. CarFax ranks states by the number of vehicles tampered with on their roads, with California at the top with 437,600 and North Carolina at 10 with 45,300. In terms of numbers, every state in the top 10 except Arizona is one of the largest car markets in the United States, Statista says top 10 The states to register vehicles in 2020 are California, Texas, Florida, Ohio, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. Additionally, the top 10 states by volume account for 1.2 million of the 1.9 million dishonest vehicles that CarFax says are on the road. That leaves an average of about 17,000 vehicles tampered with for each of the remaining 40 states.
As a percentage, of the states on that list, the biggest increase in fraud was in Texas (15%), Florida and Arizona (12% each), North Carolina (7%) and Illinois and Pennsylvania (5% per state). California, New York, Georgia and Virginia finished the top 10 with gains of less than 5%.
It’s hard to find current stats on odometer recovery. In 2002, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said 450,000 cars with tampered speedometers are sold every year, and that’s still the prescribed number about 20 years later. Last year, the NHTSA told New York Times“Cheating a speedometer is a serious crime costs Americans more than 1 billion dollars annuallyThat economic cost also comes from a study 20 years ago, which determined that each of those 450,000 vehicle sales cost the average consumer $2,336. CarFax says “consumers lose (on average) $4,000 in value accidentally buy car with the odometer back.” Coincidentally, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI Inflation Calculator puts the figure that $2,336 in 2002 equated to $3,868 in November 2022. And let’s say we don’t know CarFax’s research methods, but we do know CarFax’s research methods, the company that sells a service that addresses the purpose of the research. an official document of the NHTSA government from 2010 bearing the CarFax logo and NHTSA offer to buy CarFax reports. The company is a top pick for this type of annual local news story, like This report from Phoenix last year, this report from Detroit two years ago, this is from Jacksonville, Florida and this is from Minneapolis three years ago, and this is from Memphis, Tennessee five years ago.
Back in the last century, The US Department of Justice said The average rollback involves a loss of more than 40,000 miles, and investigative news program 60 minutes called speedometer tampering “the largest consumer scam in America.” The digital odometer hasn’t stopped working yet, reversing the odometer is still a big deal. There are “mileage correction” tools for sale on Amazon and eBay that can reset many vehicles to any chosen mileage, and plenty of YouTube tutorials. In times like now, there is so much money to earn when sell a car claims to have traveled 80,000 miles compared to another example of that model which is 120,000 actual miles. So as always, buyers beware. And don’t be afraid to ask the seller for a CarFax.
