Here's what your full Carlytics report looks like

The specification, recall and known-issues sections behave the same way for any car carrying a manufacturer-issued VIN, wherever it is sold. A locally delivered Toyota, Mazda or Ford with its original seventeen characters intact decodes to a full factory build, and its recall campaigns do not stop applying because the car is now in Queensland. Those parts of the sample are a fair preview.

The mileage section is where an Australian report differs most. The sample shows a dated series of readings because the car lived in a market that records one at every periodic inspection. Australia does not produce that series in a form we can reach, so for a locally sold car the section will show what was actually found and, where nothing was found, will say so plainly. We would rather print an empty row than a modelled trend line, which is the rule we apply to every field.

Nothing in the sample is a finance or write-off check, and nothing in a paid report will be either. Money owing and written-off status are held in Australian registers we do not read, and they are the two checks worth doing before any other. Read the sample as the specification, recall, reliability and theft layer that sits on top of those, not as a replacement for them.

Market value is drawn from advertised stock, so expect a wider range on nameplates that were only ever sold in one market and never listed widely elsewhere — a Japanese-market grade with no European or British equivalent, for instance. A wide range is the honest answer there rather than a failure, and a suspiciously narrow one on a rare car should make you more sceptical, not less.

The recall section is worth reading with the car's origin in mind. A campaign is issued against a build in the market that build was sold into, and it stays open against that build until the work is done on the individual car. An imported car can therefore show an open campaign that was in fact completed overseas before it was shipped, because a repair carried out abroad does not necessarily appear in anything you or we can see afterwards. Treat an open campaign as a question for an authorised workshop and that specific VIN rather than as a settled fact.

Two sections read thinner on an Australian car than they do on the European sample, and it is fairer to say so before you pay. Import and registration records are one: we hold no Australian registration file, so that entry reflects what the VIN and its public trail establish. Accident and damage records are the other: statutory and repairable write-offs are held in official registers we do not read, and an uninsured repair is recorded nowhere at all. Run the official checks for the first, and book an inspection for the second.

Everything in the sample is unlocked, so you can judge the depth before spending A$14.90. Run the free decode on the VIN you are actually considering first: it will tell you in seconds whether that particular car is one the report can say a great deal about, or one where the seller's import paperwork matters more than anything we hold.