Lyoncrescent:
Based on my experience, before buying any Nigerian used car, get the vin number first. The advantage of this is to first confirm that the person who bought the car as tokunbo didn't buy an accidented or flooded car and wants to dump it on you. It will also give you an idea if the odometer was rolled back amidst other information. Secondly, the vin number will show the year of the car. For example a 2009 corolla can be upgraded to 2012 and the seller will not tell you and will want to sell it as 2012 but when you put the vin number online it will show the actual model year of the car.

Most importantly, I always use a website carcomplaints.com to check that models of cars I want to buy don't have factory issues. This applies to both tokunbo and Naija used cars. My second car was a Honda accord 2003 aka EOD. The car gave me gear issues . It was later I checked https://www.carcomplaints.com/Honda/Accord/2003/ to discover that it was a factory issue with that model thus it is advisable to check for any model of car you want to buy from that website.

Finally,my formula in buying a Nigerian used car which is what applies to the car I'm using now is to buy a car that was bought brand new in Nigeria. Anyone who buys a brand new car in Nigeria more often than not maintains it very well and probably has more than one car. The car will most likely come with two or three keys and in some cases these bought brand new in Nigeria cars are often better than some tokunbo cars of the same model and definitely cheaper.

I hope someone finds this information useful.

how do we know if a car was bought brand new?

emmybliz:


how do we know if a car was bought brand new?

More often than not, it would have 2 or 3 keys and the receipt from the selling company stating it. E.g. for Toyota a receipt from Elizade or stallion or mandillas and in the case of Honda receipt from Honda place and of course the vin will have no records when checked online.

Lyoncrescent:


More often than not, it would have 2 or 3 keys and the receipt from the selling company stating it. E.g. for Toyota a receipt from Elizade or stallion or mandillas and in the case of Honda receipt from Honda place and of course the vin will have no records when checked online.

Thanks alot. i used to think every car has its vin records online, be it used or brand new.

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