AutoGrab scans all used cars advertised across the entire internet and records snapshots of all details covering, among other things, price changes. But, importantly, it records the current odometer reading in each snapshot of cars as they reappear for sale.
If a listing shows an odometer reading lower than the reading displayed when the same car was advertised previously, it is flagged to AutoGrab’s clients as having an odometer anomaly.
AutoGrab says that there are more than 270,000 used cars being advertised at any one time in Australia. Most are private sellers reaching out to private buyers and mostly on online marketplaces.
But shortages of new cars means that car dealers are reaching out more often to private sellers where odometer fiddles are most common.
The alerts are valuable to licensed motor car traders because of the serious cost penalties that hit dealers when they discover they have inadvertently bought a car with a wound-back odometer. They have to take the loss on the chin as they cannot knowingly pass the car on.
AutoGrab recently revealed to a large dealership group that it had 15 cars with odometer anomalies in stock across its multiple used car operations.
Saxon Odgers
When sold at their true value (ie: with the correct much higher odometer readings) potentially the group would have to take a hit of anything from $10,000 to tens of thousands of dollars per car – especially for prestige and luxury models nearing six figures.
AutoGrab says that it has seen odometer anomalies of anything up to 160,000km. One media-celebrated anomaly revealed by the recently-opened NSW government odometer fraud website was a Toyota HiLux which had been wound back 400,000km thus defrauding the buyer of an estimated $20,000 – $40,000.
A search of the AutoGrab database for GoAutoNews Premium has revealed that in the first seven months of this year there have been more than 6000 odometer anomalies detected from its analysis of classified advertising.
AutoGrab exposed between 810 and 634 new anomalies each month during this period.
Number of kilometre anomalies by month – 2023
| January | 809 |
| February | 765 |
| March | 810 |
| April | 660 |
| May | 751 |
| June | 699 |
| July | 634 |
The chief commercial officer of AutoGrab, Saxon Odgers, told GoAutoNews Premium: “Using our tools enables you to identify the history of the car. What is the listing history, how many times has it been advertised and what were the kilometres at each time, this enables our customers to make informed data lead decisions on vehicle acquisition for retail purposes.
“Today a dealer who’s buying a car privately or even from a wholesaler etc should, at a minimum, check out the car’s history.
“AutoGrab’s sourcing tool is currently the best way to identify problem cars. This should be part of a dealership’s acquisition process when checking pricing & market insights, it’s important to review the history of every car and review all the details,” Mr Odgers said.
He said that AutoGrab has seen anomalies from 5000km to 160,000km.
Mr Odgers said that AutoGrab was holding talks with various state authorities about its data.
“We see it as somewhat of an obligation of ours to give this data back to the industry as much as possible and inform and make sure it is as front-of-mind as it can be.
“It has huge financial implications to dealers across the country. As we know the industry is going through somewhat of a market shift due to supply and demand and economic challenges.
“So buying $80,000 cars, for example, which have wound-back odometers can put a huge gap in the overall gross profit in that used-car department, which is a serious problem,” Mr Odgers said.
The AutoGrab data reveals the following:
Largest recorded kilometre anomalies – by car build date – 2023
| Cars built between 2010 to 2014 | 2082 |
| Cars built between 2005 to 2009 | 1880 |
| Cars built before 2004 | 1198 |
| Cars built between 2020 and this year | 114 |
Number of kilometre anomalies by month – 2023
| January | 809 |
| February | 765 |
| March | 810 |
| April | 660 |
| May | 751 |
| June | 699 |
| July | 634 |
Number of kilometre anomalies by state – 2023
| New South Wales | 2412 |
| Victoria | 1243 |
| Western Australia | 850 |
| Queensland | 840 |
| South Australia | 564 |
| Tasmania | 166 |
| Canberra | 78 |
| Northern Territory | 31 |
Brands with most kilometre anomalies – 2023
| Toyota | 1170 |
| Holden | 796 |
| Ford | 611 |
| Mazda | 495 |
| Nissan | 471 |
| Mitsubishi | 369 |
| Hyundai | 358 |
| Volkswagen | 261 |
| Honda | 254 |
| Subaru | 228 |
| BMW | 191 |
| Audi | 137 |
| Suzuki | 123 |
| Mercedes-Benz | 113 |
| Jeep | 107 |
| Kia | 98 |
| Lexus | 53 |
| LandRover | 48 |
| Volvo | 34 |
Read more:
Chamber urges: Report odometer criminals
By John Mellor
