You can hardly live in the mountainous Oregon without a vehicle. A road to the work is usually long and hard, and more or less regular public transport can be found only in bigger cities. There is definitely a reason why the motto of Oregon is "She flies with her own wings". If you live in a small village in this state and your office is in a city - a car for you won't be a luxury in any way. It will be just a means of transport, just a part of your basic needs.
If you decided to buy a new vehicle, your only problem will be its potential price. But if you are a risky kind of person and want to purchase a second-hand car - be careful: there is too much fraud in the used car business.
How to avoid all possible and impossible difficulties when buying a second-hand car in Oregon? Just make sure that you can decipher its Vehicle Identification Number and get a car history report.
Every single vehicle manufactured in 1981 or later, has a VIN number. For a modern car, this 17-digit code is almost as important as DNA for a human: it reflects both the basic info about the car, and its background, including ownership and theft history. But it was not until 1953 when the first car received its unique identification number. Before that, the used car business was a paradise for the dealers and a nightmare for the buyers. Every future car owner literally purchased a pig in a poke, and it was up to a car dealer not to sell a lemon with some criminal history.
As the VIN check procedures in all other US states, the Oregon VIN check is possible in two main ways. The first option is to visit your local DMV department. The second is to do it online.
Oregon VIN History
Oregon DMV VIN check is safe but time-consuming. Why not look into a much more simple option - searching the car history online? Any online VIN check service will provide you all information you need to purchase a used car without problems. A dealer can omit data about the reversed odometer, too many repairs or accidents and even about the theft history of the car.
Your online car history report will contain not only the basic information about the vehicle you're planning to buy but also the information about your dream car's history including the history of thefts, accidents and other mishaps. If you try to decipher a car's VIN manually, you'll get the former but never the latter. Moreover, manual VIN decoding is a very hard and time-consuming work: it can take you more than an hour to decipher a car's VIN if you aren't experienced enough in doing this.
The dealers who are planning to sell a vehicle should also be ready to fulfill a VIN check procedure. The Oregon state law encourages the car dealers to provide the customers only valid information about the vehicle they are going to sell. Being the member of the National Motor Vehicle Information System this state has to control if the information is up-to-date or valid in order to make sure the future car sales will be much smoother than the previous ones.
As we have mentioned above, only in 1981, did all the US cars obtain their unique VIN numbers. If your destination car's identification number is not searchable - be careful: the absence of VIN can be indicative of a fraudulent sale.
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