How to trace previous owners

NBW

I recently purchased a car privately from someone I know and this person told me that the car was bought new from the garage. I was very happy with the purchase and the fact that I trusted and knew the whole history of the car through the person I bought it from....or so I thought.

So today I receive the new registration cert from Shannon and it says two previous owners. I did a Cartell check which also states two previous owners.

Can anyone tell me how I can trace who the 1st owner was?
I suspect the person who I bought the car from, bought it as a demo or something from the garage? Just want to get to the root of it.

Anan1

Legally, you can't. You could ask the person you bought the car from? Alternatively have a look in the front of the service book, the first owner's details are generally filled in there.

L1011

One possibility is that it was ex-demo. My log book shows 1 previous owner despite me collecting the car with 18km on the clock - the previous owner was Fiat Auto Ireland.

Misticles

would the two previous owners not be the person you bought it off and the garage??

-Chris-

Not if it was brand new, only if it was demo, hire drive etc.

@OP - due to Data Protection you won't get that information anywhere. Anan's suggestion is probably your only chance.

trad

Might be a bit extreme but a request under the Freedom of Information Act to the Dept of Environment, Heretage and Local Government regarding the vehicle would probably get you the information.
http://www.environ.ie/en/FOI/

NBW

Thanks all. The car was first registered in May '07. There is a dealer stamp for a car service at 14,000km which was at the end of August '07. Cartell tells me that the date of sale to the second owner occurred towards the end of October '07. There is no other info in the log book.

My concern now is that it was an ex rental or something. Just want to have my homework done before I approach the person I bought it from. Problem is this person is close to family. Goes to show who you can trust

-Chris-

Does it have dealer stickers on it - do you know who the dealer is?

You might put in a call and see if they'll tell you whether it was a demo or not.

kildare.17hmr

The current registered owner of a vehicle can get previous owners info from shannon. Iv done it before for customers who wanted a full account of vehicle history.

-Chris-

NBW wrote: »

My concern now is that it was an ex rental or something. Just want to have my homework done before I approach the person I bought it from. Problem is this person is close to family. Goes to show who you can trust

I wouldn't go accusing anyone of anything tbh, there's every likelihood that the person you bought this car was sold the car by the garage as a pre-registered car (no mileage), or as an ex-demo car "yeah, it's a new car. It's only been used for test drives" or otherwise similarly described by the salesperson.

The person you bought from may have considered themselves to be the first owner and didn't realise the significance of there being one previous owner on the logbook.

kildare.17hmr

I would imagine like the rest of the guys say it was a demo car, demo cars are registered to the dealer and they have to be put down as an owner on the system AFAIK you cannot register a car under the motor trader agreement

NBW

Ok but does 14,000km not seem much for garage to put up on a demo over a 3 month period?

kildare.17hmr

NBW wrote: »

Ok but does 14,000km not seem much for garage to put up on a demo over a 3 month period?

It could have been used as a company car for one of the sales staff ether which could account for the mileage, the car could have been in the garage since the end of 06 or the start of 07 and could well have been driven on trade plates for test drives ect.. if i was to guess id say probably a mixture of both test drives and company car possably registered to help along the sale. very hard to tell tho unless you contact the gharage it came from. they should be able to tell you what you want to know

jaffa20

trad wrote: »

Might be a bit extreme but a request under the Freedom of Information Act to the Dept of Environment, Heretage and Local Government regarding the vehicle would probably get you the information.
http://www.environ.ie/en/FOI/

Wouldn't that go against the Data Protection Act?

Op, does it really matter that much how many previous owners there was? It won't make much difference now that you have already bought the car.

oregano

There's also always the slim chance that your friend is and was always the original owner. 1) The garage registered it to their own name to claim demo discount off the distributor and pass that along to the end user or 2) to get your friend, say, a Dublin plate and he only had a country address. Stupid as that sounds, when I worked in BMW a lot of good clients got us to VRT their new car so they'd have a D plate. Next time it was due to be taxed we'd change the car into their real address.

Then again, even if it was a hire, a demo, or AN Other car for its first six months what does it matter? Any warranty issue would have been solved on site.

djimi

oregano wrote: »

There's also always the slim chance that your friend is and was always the original owner. 1) The garage registered it to their own name to claim demo discount off the distributor and pass that along to the end user or 2) to get your friend, say, a Dublin plate and he only had a country address. Stupid as that sounds, when I worked in BMW a lot of good clients got us to VRT their new car so they'd have a D plate. Next time it was due to be taxed we'd change the car into their real address.

Then again, even if it was a hire, a demo, or AN Other car for its first six months what does it matter? Any warranty issue would have been solved on site.

You can do that without having to register a second owner tho, no? I almost bought an import straight from Japan; I would have been the first Irish owner, and I was told I could use any address in Dublin to get a D reg plate so long as I had access to the address (I was going to use my uncles address) and then just change the address to my own, but Id still be the one owner of the car.

ronaneire

And why didn't you check the registration cert before you bought it?

Andrew Campbell

I wouldn't be overly worried about the number of previous owners. A car with lots of owners was usually an indication that owners were trying to pass on a troublesome car. This is clearly not the case in this instance. I've seen dealers register cars to their staff to meet a sales target with the importer so they can qualify for a rebate.

-Chris-

NBW wrote: »

Thanks all. The car was first registered in May '07. There is a dealer stamp for a car service at 14,000km which was at the end of August '07. Cartell tells me that the date of sale to the second owner occurred towards the end of October '07. There is no other info in the log book.

Honestly, based on that mileage and those registration/sale dates, my money is on hire-drive.

Again, it's possible the dealer told the buyer a "white lie" when they were buying the car - most customers are wary of hire-drives and so often salespeople can be kind of non-specific about the history of the car in that instance.