What a proper inspection actually covers
Almost every importer will tell you the car is inspected. Very few will tell you by whom, against what list, or what happens to the findings they would rather you did not see. Those three questions are the entire difference between an inspection and a photograph.
Question one: who is holding the camera?
If the seller inspects the car, that is not an inspection. It is marketing with a clipboard. There is no scenario in which somebody whose income depends on the sale is a neutral assessor of the thing being sold, and no amount of thoroughness fixes that.
Our inspector is an independent third party, engaged and paid per vehicle, with no interest in whether you go ahead. Their fee, $150 to $350 depending on where the car is, appears as its own line on every vehicle page, so you can see that it was paid and roughly what it bought.
Question two: against what list?
An inspection that varies by inspector is not a standard, it is an opinion. Ours does not change whether the inspector is in Georgia, Texas or Florida, and it does not change whether the car is a $50,000 Lexus or a $300,000 Ferrari. Same list, every time.
The capture
- Full exterior 360°Continuous walkaround under even light, then each panel individually at close range.
- Full interior 360°Front and rear, seats, headlining, every screen powered on and working.
- Engine bay, cold and runningCold start captured. Leaks, corrosion and non-factory work are far easier to see before it warms.
- Undercarriage where safeOn a lift where available. This is where flood history and structural repair actually show.
- Odometer, legiblePhotographed clearly enough to read, then cross-checked against dated service records.
- VIN in every locationDashboard, door jamb, engine bay and the title itself, photographed separately and matched.
That last one matters more than it sounds. A VIN that matches across all four locations is one of the few cheap, fast checks that genuinely rules out a whole category of fraud.
Question three: what happens to bad findings?
This is the real test. Any process looks rigorous when the car is perfect.
Our rule is that the report reaches the buyer unedited, and anything material appears on the public listing. If a rear door was refinished before we acquired the car, the listing says so, states that panel gaps were measured and found factory-correct, and includes the photographs. If a wheel has curb rash, it says which wheel, and whether the refinish is included in the price.
It does cost us occasionally. A disclosed repaint makes a car harder to sell than an undisclosed one, right up until the moment the buyer notices it in their own driveway. At that point it costs immeasurably more.
The report is also the contract
The inspection is not only a decision aid. It is retained as the documented baseline for two separate commitments:
- Delivery assurance, the car that arrives must match what the report documented. If transit damaged it, that is ours.
- Six-month warranty, the report is what proves a fault is new rather than pre-existing wear you were always inheriting.
Neither promise is enforceable without a timestamped, neutral record of the vehicle's condition at the moment of purchase. That is why the inspection sits where it does in the payment sequence: it is not a formality before the money moves, it is the reason the money can move at all.