Before you hand over a deposit, the DVLA will tell you a surprising amount about any car for free. You only need the registration number. Most buyers never look; the ones who do walk into a viewing already knowing whether the advert is telling the truth.

Here is what each field in the DVLA record means, and the red flag hiding behind it.

Tax status: taxed, untaxed, or SORN

The record shows whether the car is currently taxed and when the tax runs out. "SORN" means the keeper has declared it off the road.

What to read into it: a car that's been on SORN for a long stretch hasn't been driven. Ask why. Long-term storage can mean a cherished classic, or it can mean a car that failed its MOT badly and got parked. Cross-reference with the MOT record. And remember that road tax hasn't transferred with the car since 2014; whatever the seller says, you must tax it yourself before driving it home.

MOT status and expiry

The DVLA record shows whether the car has a valid MOT and when it expires. No MOT usually means no test pass, which also invalidates most insurance on the road. A car being sold with a nearly expired MOT is worth a harder look: the seller may be offloading it before a test they expect it to fail.

Date of first registration

This is the car's true age, whatever the plate suggests. Check it against the advert. A "2019 car" first registered in early 2019 was probably built in 2018, which matters for valuation and for parts.

Date of last V5C (logbook) issue

A V5C gets reissued when the keeper changes, when it's lost, or when details change. A very recent issue date on a car that's supposedly had "one careful owner for ten years" is a question that needs answering. It may be innocent (a lost logbook), but it's also a classic feature of cars being flipped quickly by traders posing as private sellers.

Colour

If the DVLA colour doesn't match the car in front of you, it has been resprayed and the change was notified, or worse, it wasn't and the record simply disagrees. Full resprays are expensive; people rarely pay for them on healthy cars. Accident repair and disguising a car's identity are the two common reasons.

Engine size, fuel type and CO₂

Check these against the advert line by line. A "2.0 diesel" that the DVLA says is a 1.6 petrol is either an advert typo or a plate on the wrong car; both mean walk away until it's explained. The CO₂ figure also drives your running costs, including clean air zone charges in cities like London.

Export marker

If the car is marked for export, stop. It should not be for sale on a UK driveway.

These are the fields that catch most problems. DVLA's record actually runs to eighteen fields in total, including a few specialist ones (type approval, wheelplan, revenue weight, Euro standard and Real Driving Emissions) that matter for specific situations like buying a diesel for ULEZ driving or anything van-derived. Our full field-by-field guide covers all eighteen.

The pattern matters more than any one field

None of these fields alone condemns a car. What you're looking for is coherence: does the DVLA's version of this car match the seller's version? Honest cars line up. Dodgy ones show small mismatches (a colour here, a recent V5C there) that only surface when you actually look.

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