How to tell if a car has been in an accident

Look at the body lines

Look alongside of the car. The lines of the car body should be perfectly straight. Look

at the top image, this Mercedes-Benz hasn’t been in an accident, and you can see the body lines are perfectly straight. Look at the reflection: it is perfect, no ripples and paint quality of all panels looks the same. Try to check the entire car this way.

But look at the bottom image. Check this Toyota’s rear fender. You can notice that the reflection on the rear fender isn’t perfect. Therefore, you can suspect that this rear fender has been damaged. These ripples are due to boddywork that was done when bending the metal back into shape after a wreck and can also mean that bady filler was used on the car.

Check for body filler

Have a magnet on you (a kitchen magnet will work just fine, dosnt have to be verry strong) and run the magnet allong the length of the car and if you get areas where the magnet disnt “stick” to the body or a pannel of the car that means that that spot what damadged and repaired with some type of body filler. If the non-magnetic spot continues over a verry large area it is likly that that might just be a plastic pannel which you dont need to worry about.

Check all the gaps between the doors, fendors, hood and the trunk.

Every gap should be even along its entire length. Look at the image to the right.The gap is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, which probably means this car has been hit at its right front corner. Try to inspect all the gaps the same way. If one of the gaps looks too narrow (too wide) - compare it to the same gap on another side of the car, they have to be of exactly the same width. If they are notable different, it’s very possible the car has been in an accident.

Check for Paint Overspray.

Open the doors and check for paint overspray on parts that aren’t supposed to be painted (ie; plastic plugs, rubber hoses leading from the body into the door). If there is body-coloured paint overspray, you can assume that there was some sort of body work done, it might just be a enw paintjob or it might be collision repair you can investigate further. You should also check under the hood and see if there is any overspray on any parts under the edges of the hood. Try checking the chrome around the doorframes, windows, and mirrors for overspray.

Check for rust

After your done with all of that do a quick check over of the car just to see if there is any rust. If there is a significant ammount of rust I would think again before purchasing the vehicle.

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