2015 AUDI A4 PREMIUM VIN WAUAFAFL7FN019342

This entry is for a 2015 Audi A4 Premium, finished in black. The car runs on petrol. There is an automatic gearbox, with front-wheel drive.

At the time of recording, the car had covered 171,128 miles. The figure is in miles and needs converting before it is compared with kilometres: one mile is about 1.6 km. The mileage is high for the car’s age, so the suspension, brakes, seats and steering wheel deserve a close look. Turning back an odometer takes little skill and leaves no visible trace, which is why earlier figures matter more than the display. Service invoices and inspection reports each carry a mileage figure, and lined up in order they show whether the clock tells the truth.

The main issue noted for this car is front-end damage. The damage type is a short label: the extent of the damage and the quality of any repair still have to be judged on the car. Whatever the cause, a diagnostic scan of the car’s electronics shows fault codes that a visual check misses.

The record notes that the car ran and drove. A key was there when the car was checked. Condition notes are a snapshot: the car may have been worked on, stripped of parts or left standing since.

According to the source data, the car has a salvage title. Titles of this type are issued to cars declared a total loss.

Registrations, changes of owner, inspection results and accident claims together make up what is called a car’s history. Pieces of a car’s history sit with registries, dealers, workshops and insurance companies, and none of them sees the whole picture. What a car has been through is seldom visible at first glance, and a respray can make even a badly damaged car look sound.

A petrol engine in good order starts cleanly, idles evenly and pulls without hesitation. Automatic transmissions, CVTs included, are expensive to repair, so the test drive should include pulling away from a standstill and a stretch at motorway speed.

The VIN is a 17-character code assigned at the factory: it identifies the manufacturer, the model and its variant, and ends with a serial number unique to the car. The VIN of this Audi A4 Premium is WAUAFAFL7FN019342.

A VIN report gathers what different sources know about a car, such as the number of owners, mileage readings, damage and any branded title. A professional inspection makes sense whatever the paperwork shows, because no report measures corrosion, worn bushes or a poor repair. Look up the history of VIN WAUAFAFL7FN019342 first, and let what it shows guide the inspection.