I would assume that there's a strong possibility that any used vehicle has been clocked.

I once bought a 4 year old Sprinter van with 101,000 on the clock. My wife spotted some faint evidence from the lettering that had been removed and polished out on the top line of the roof that it had been a courier/dispatch van.

I called the dispatch company and they had thrown away the service history (they were totally innocent - leased the vans for three years, kept the history for a year after returning the vans to the lease company) but said that a 3 year old van would typically leave them (after sometimes working say 20 hours a day with different drivers) with around 375,000 - 400,000 on the clock!

Having only owned the van for 3-4 days, I contacted the seller (a well-heeled articulate chap, but with an attack-trained dog the size of the Sprinter itself) to say I'd made a mistake and would he take the van back at discount. He did, I paid £6350 and he gave me £6,000 back. PHEW!

4-5 months later, I received a call from Cheshire Trading Standards asking if I was the former owner of the van.
I told the truth and all was well. What had happened is, the next owner took the van to a Mercedes-Benz main dealer for a repair, and the garage remembered seeing the van in the past showing a mileage well in excess of its current reading.

Trading standards told me that one man (although he had a network of mechanics and painters) was responsible for clocking 180 Sprinters, all from the same lease company. He new the system of 3 year lease and history being discarded after around a year and bought at auction with high miles (and probably cosmetically poor), clocked, tarted up and then back onto the market.

I was told he'd get a hefty spell behind bars but only the same amount of time as someone who had clocked say 20-30 vehicles.

The van? It was a 3.0 litre diesel and went like the clappers. I was actually a little disappointed to let it go.
The dispatch company told me that in between main dealer servicing, their own in-house mechanics would regularly do oil and filters changes and that although the vans worked hard, they were very well looked after.


I have another clocking story in my locker, but no time to post now unfortunately.

I would have worked on the basis that clocking does happen but is actually less common, proportionately speaking... Until reading this thread!

Last edited by pld118 on 16th Sep 2014 11:36am. Edited 1 time in total

A friend of mine works at a van auction site and regularly finds discrepancies with van mileage - and I mean regularly!

too right, a colleague recently got their fingers seriously burned as a so called "mechanic" had swopped the speedo head on a Defender wiping out a huge chunk of miles... it only showed up at MOT time 2021 L405 Vogue SE 4.4 V8 DIESEL ~ #17

Pal of mine is doing a self build conversion on a sprinter...he looked at a good 20-30 vans before he saw one with sensible mileage and a correct history....he saw 60 plate sprinters with a "genuine" 200k, that a quick check on DVLA showed 300k +

In the end he bit the bullet and went to a Merc dealer. Is this where I put the car details and a bit about myself ?........