Guides
Guides: what to settle before buying a car
Long-form answers to the questions that get three sentences on a landing page — from importing through the viewing to the handover when you sell.
Buying
Asking a seller questions without speaking their language
The car is right; the seller just writes in Italian, Polish or Dutch. You cannot translate the language barrier away, but you can make it smaller: with questions that need no translation at all, and with answers made of numbers, dates and photos.
7 min read
Buying
Is the car really there? Photos with a random code
A listing shows what a car looked like at some point — not whether it stands today where the seller says it does. Before you drive hundreds of kilometres, you can ask the seller for three photos with a random code. That settles one question, and exactly one.
6 min read
Buying
Describe the car you want and let dealers offer
Not every car is online when you look for it. Some dealers have one on its way, at a partner or expected as a trade-in. A wanted request reverses the direction: you describe the car once, and dealers it suits can send you an offer.
6 min read
Buying
Searching in one sentence: what the filters make of it
Instead of setting a dozen filters, you can type a sentence on Carvexia, in your own language, and the search sets the filters itself. That saves time as long as you know what happens: only what translates clearly into a filter is taken from the sentence. The rest is dropped rather than guessed.
5 min read
Buying
Buying a car in Italy: the passaggio di proprietà
In Italy a car is only truly sold once the register knows about it. The seller's signature must be certified and the change entered in the PRA — and anyone who wants to export the car needs a separate route, because without Italian residence they usually cannot register it in their own name at all.
6 min read
Buying
Buying used in Spain: transfer, tax, environmental label
Buying used in Spain involves two procedures that are easily confused: the transfer at the traffic authority and the tax the region levies on the purchase. On top of that come a report anyone can request, and a sticker that helps decide a car's value in some cities.
6 min read
Buying
Hail damage: spotting, repairing, pricing it in
Hail damage is rarely dangerous, but it is almost always dearer or cheaper than it looks — depending on which side of the deal you are on. If you can find the dents, know the repair methods and understand what a payout without repair means, you negotiate on solid ground.
6 min read
Buying
Watching the market instead of searching every day
Scroll through the same search every evening and eventually you only see what is new, not what is good. A market is easier to watch if you decide beforehand what you are looking for and then pay attention to movements rather than individual cars.
6 min read
Buying
Timing a purchase: when the market works for you
Used-car prices are market prices, and markets have rhythms. Knowing them can win you something on price. Overrating them means waiting for the perfect month and buying under pressure in the end.
6 min read
Buying
Vehicles for a small business: choosing, buying, running
For a trade business, a delivery service or a small office, a vehicle is not a status symbol but a tool that has to work every day. Yet it is often bought like a private car — by feel, by offer and without the questions that only surface after six months in the business.
6 min read
Buying
The first message to a seller: questions that save you trips
Most viewings that end with “I could have saved myself the trip” could have been prevented with one message. The first enquiry is not a courtesy note but the cheapest filter a car purchase has.
7 min read
Buying
Comparing specifications: trim lines, packs and what listings leave out
Two listings with the same model name, the same engine and a similar price can describe two very different cars. The difference lies in the equipment — and that is where listings are least reliable, because each one writes it up differently.
6 min read
Buying
New in the country: buying a car before everything is set up
Anyone moving to a new country often needs a car first and gets the papers it requires last. The order differs from back home — and knowing it means you are not left with a car you have bought but cannot register.
6 min read
Buying
EU reimport: why the same new car costs less abroad
A new car does not cost the same everywhere in Europe, and on popular models the gap is wide enough to support an entire trade. This piece sets out where the gap comes from, how much of it reaches the buyer, and where it dissolves again.
9 min read
Buying
Paying for a car abroad without losing your money
In a cross-border purchase the risk is not the car but the gap between the moment your money is gone and the moment the car is there. Every sensible precaution comes down to closing that gap to nothing.
10 min read
Buying
Spotting a repaired accident car: the traces that stay
Almost every car past ten years old has lost some metal along the way, and most of it is irrelevant. Only one question matters: was load-bearing structure deformed — and if it was, how was it straightened?
9 min read
Buying
Negotiating the price: what actually works
The price of a used car is rarely decided at the kitchen table but before it — by what you know about the market and about this particular car. Arrive with evidence and you are done in ten minutes, where opinions take an hour and still move nothing.
8 min read
Buying
Buying privately or from a dealer: what the difference costs
For the same car, the gap between a private advert and a dealer's forecourt is regularly several thousand euros. The question is not whether that gap is justified but what you get for it — and whether you need it.
9 min read
Buying
Reading the service book: what the stamps tell you
“Full service history” appears in every other advert and on its own means little. The book gets interesting only when you hold the entries up against each other — and when you know which jobs never appear in it at all.
9 min read
Buying
How many kilometres a year is normal?
Mileage is the one number every buyer compares, and it describes the condition of a car about as well as age describes a person's health. The useful question is not whether a figure is high but how it came about.
8 min read
Buying
Nearly new, demonstrator, pre-registered — the difference
Between a new car and a used one lies a field with its own vocabulary, and none of it is protected. What a car has actually been through is not in the advert but in the registration document and the service book.
9 min read
Buying
Buying a car you have never seen
The stock across Europe is large, and the best offer is rarely in your own town. Buying a car at a distance is therefore not recklessness but a piece of organisation — with an order of steps you do not depart from.
10 min read
Buying
Checking a car's history: what the chassis number gives away
Every car carries a number that distinguishes it from all others, and almost every piece of information about its past hangs on it. Asking for it before you travel saves more wasted appointments than any other single question.
9 min read
Buying
The test drive: what to check, and in what order
Most test drives establish whether a car is likeable, and that is settled within a minute. The expensive questions are answered only by a drive built for the purpose — five kinds of road, a fixed order, the radio off.
11 min read
Buying
An electric car as a second car: when the sums work
As the only car in a household an electric car has to do everything. As a second car it only has to do what comes up every day — and that is exactly where it is strongest.
9 min read
Buying
Checking the air conditioning on a used car properly
Almost every viewing checks the air conditioning the same way: switch it on, hand in front of the vent, move on. That misses the difference between a system that works and one that still works.
8 min read
Buying
Rust: where it shows up first and where it decides
Rust is the one ailment on a car that is visible before it becomes expensive — provided you look in the right place. Those places are the same on almost every car, because they follow from how cars are built rather than from who built them.
9 min read
Buying
Spotting a wound-back odometer: seven checks
A wound-back odometer costs the buyer several thousand on average — not at once, but through the repairs that arrive earlier than expected. The good news: tampering leaves traces in places the forger rarely thinks about.
6 min read
Buying
Your first car: what actually matters
With a first car, the purchase price is the smallest of the numbers involved. Insurance, consumption, reliability and parts prices decide whether the first year is a pleasure or empties the account.
6 min read
Buying
The viewing: a verdict in twenty minutes
Most bad buys happen not because someone missed a fault but because they looked in the wrong order. This order takes twenty minutes and answers the expensive questions first.
7 min read