A car restored after a serious accident and put up for sale can be recognized by a number of indirect signs. Maxim Shelkov, head of the Avtokriminalist expert center, told Motor magazine about this.
According to him, too new headlights and taillights, as well as perfect paintwork without chips and abrasions on a car aged 5–7 years, should be alarming. This may indicate secondary painting of the entire body after serious damage.
Replacing a paper vehicle title with a new one is an indirect sign that insurance could have been paid for the car due to total damage. In this case, ownership passes to the insurance company, and it is entered in the vehicle title. A reseller who has restored a car from the remains and wants to resell it may replace the vehicle title to hide this fact from the buyer.
Another important sign is the discrepancy between the years of manufacture indicated on the glass, plastic parts, wiring and other elements, and the official year of manufacture of the car in the documents. As a rule, cars leave the factory with glass from the same year, and a large spread in dating is considered suspicious.
He added that cars after total accidents are often restored with parts from auto dismantling, without bothering to match the dates of manufacture of spare parts, which gives away their past.