What we’re learning from our first 100 used-car inspections in Pakistan
Every number on this page comes from real, anonymized CarOK doorstep inspections — no estimates, no “industry figures”, no fabricated percentages. The study updates as the database grows toward 100 and beyond.
How the data is collected
Every data point comes from a paid, real-world pre-purchase inspection: a buyer was genuinely considering the car, and a CarOK team inspected it at the seller’s location in Lahore or Islamabad. These are not showroom demos or cherry-picked wrecks — they’re the actual mix of cars Pakistani buyers shortlist.
Each inspection scores 74 checkpoints across engine, transmission, brakes, suspension, electrical, structure, test drive, interior, tyres and lights (see the full 70+ point checklist), plus a panel-by-panel body map where every scratch, dent, repaint and rust spot is coded and photographed, with paint-thickness meter readings on suspect panels.
Scoring model: major mechanical systems weigh 45% of the overall score, minor/comfort systems 15%, and the exterior body map 40% — producing per-system scores and one overall score out of 10.
Anonymization: aggregates only. No registration numbers, owner names, or identifiable photos are published; case examples use make/model/year only.
Limitations (read this): n=34 is a small sample and Lahore/Islamabad-weighted; percentages will move as the dataset grows. Cars sent for inspection are pre-filtered by buyers (slightly nicer than the raw market). Where our form doesn’t capture a variable — e.g. imported-vs-local origin — we say so instead of guessing.
The headline numbers
94%
of cars had at least one body finding (32 of 34) — 31 had five or more
4.9/10
average exterior score — vs 8.3/10 mechanical. Bodies age far faster than engines
562
total body findings logged — roughly 17 per affected car
1 in 7
cars scored below 5/10 overall (walk-away territory); 10 of 34 scored 8+ (genuinely good buys)
What the 562 body findings are
Which panels take the hits
The four doors together account for ~39% of all findings — tight parking and motorcycle traffic at exactly door height.
Not yet published — awaiting data (we don’t invent numbers)
- Imported vs local split — origin isn’t a structured field yet. Query once added:
SELECT origin, AVG(overallScore), COUNT(*) FROM carReport WHERE deletedAt IS NULL GROUP BY origin; - Average tyre life remaining — tread depth is recorded qualitatively today; publishing after per-tyre mm readings land in the form.
AVG(JSON_EXTRACT(section12MinorItemsTiresRims,'$.q##.tread_mm')) - Average negotiation saved — outcome (final price vs asking) isn’t captured post-inspection; will publish once buyers report back at scale.
The 10 most-flagged problems — and why buyers miss them
Counted from the 74 scored checkpoints across all 34 inspections. The pattern: what fails isn’t what buyers check.
Radiator core support damaged / repaired
13 of 34 cars
The #1 accident tell — it takes the hit in front-end collisions and is expensive to disguise properly.
Front tyres worn or mismatched
13 of 34 cars
Front-right 13, front-left 12 — front rubber wears first and sellers rarely replace it before sale.
Ball joints worn
11 of 34 cars
Pakistani roads eat ball joints; buyers can’t hear them on a short, smooth test route.
Rear tyres worn
11 of 34 cars
Rear-right 11, rear-left 10 — often older than the fronts.
Steering alignment off
10 of 34 cars
A pulls-to-one-side car often hides a kerb strike or worn linkage.
Boot floor rust / accident damage
10 of 34 cars
Rear-end repairs hide under the boot carpet — almost nobody lifts it.
A/B/C/D pillars repaired
8 of 34 cars
Pillar work = a serious hit. Visible only in weld texture and paint depth.
Interior trims damaged
8 of 34 cars
Cheap to see, useful for negotiation.
Suspension noise on test drive
7 of 34 cars
Only shows under load on broken surfaces — not in a bazaar parking lot.
Front rails bent / repaired
7 of 34 cars
Chassis rails are the skeleton; 1 in 5 cars flagged here.
How we catch these: paint-thickness readings on every suspect panel, boot-carpet-up structural checks, a loaded test drive on real roads, and the AI photo inspection as a second pair of eyes on the body map.
What we’ve inspected so far
The sample mirrors the market. We’ll publish per-brand fault patterns only when each brand’s sample is big enough to be fair — for now, distribution only.
While brand-level fault rates mature, our model-specific guidance lives in the buying guides: Corolla, Civic, City, Alto, Cultus, WagonR and Yaris.
Imports: the paper trail matters as much as the metal
Imports in our data (JDM Nissan, Daihatsu, and kei-class cars) show the same body-first pattern — but they add a second dimension: the story told by the Japanese auction sheet. Our clearest case: an import whose sheet-vs-metal comparison exposed repainted panels and a repaired rear that the “clean” listing never mentioned — the full story is in the case studies.
The working rule from our inspections: the sheet verifies the past; the inspection verifies the present. A genuine grade-4 sheet doesn’t cover the two years of Pakistani parking after import, and a beautiful body doesn’t authenticate a photoshopped sheet. Cross-check both — the decoder explains every grade and damage code you’ll see.
Document issues ride along with imports: incomplete import papers or ownership chains that stall transfers. That’s a five-minute save via document verification before any money moves.
Local cars: sun, doors and the odometer question
Locally-registered cars dominate the sample, and their signature is environmental: paint fade is the single most common finding in the entire dataset (203 of 562 findings), concentrated on hood, roof and boot — the sun-facing panels. Doors collect the dents.
On mileage: our form flags wear-vs-odometer mismatches (pedal rubbers, steering shine, seat bolsters) rather than pretending to “certify” mileage. Pattern to date: suspension and tyre wear frequently outruns the odometer story — worn ball joints on a “60,000 km” car is a conversation worth having with the seller.
Wear patterns cluster exactly where our top-10 list says: tyres, ball joints, alignment, and interior trims. Individually small; together they justify a price correction — and they’re all in the scored report you can forward to the seller.
Three inspections that tell the whole story
1.4/10
The import that hid an accident
Clean listing, tidy photos — and a repaired rear end the paint meter and boot floor gave away.
25.0 mils
The full respray sold as “genuine paint”
Factory paint reads ~4–6 mils. This car’s panels read up to 25 — every panel resprayed.
39
39 findings on one “excellent” car
A body map that turned an “excellent condition” asking price into an honest negotiation.
If you only do six things, do these
Put a paint meter on every panel
The single highest-value 10 minutes. Even readings ≈ original; wild readings ≈ filler and history.
Lift the boot carpet
10 of our 34 cars flagged here. Rust, ripples or fresh underseal = rear hit.
Sight the radiator core support
Our #1 structural flag (13 of 34). Fresh paint, welds or kinks = front hit.
Read tyre DOT dates + tread
A third of cars need rubber soon — that’s your money, negotiate it.
Drive it on a broken road
Ball joints and suspension noise only speak under load (11 and 7 flags respectively).
Match the paper to the car
Auction sheet for imports, registration file for locals — before you pay, not after.
The complete list, in inspection order: the 70+ point used-car inspection checklist. What it costs to have us do all of it: inspection pricing.
Want your shortlisted car in the next hundred?
A CarOK team inspects it at the seller’s doorstep — 70+ checkpoints, paint-meter readings, scored report, honest verdict. Or start free with the auction sheet.
The field study — your questions
About this study
Reviewed by: CarOK Inspection Team · Last updated: July 2026
Data source: CarOK inspection database (completed doorstep inspections, anonymized).
Method: 74 scored checkpoints + coded body map per car; aggregates computed by direct database queries; no sampling, no estimation.
Limitations: n=34; Lahore/Islamabad-weighted; buyer-shortlisted cars; unstructured variables reported as “awaiting data”.
What is this study based on?
Every statistic on this page is computed directly from CarOK’s inspection database — 34 completed doorstep pre-purchase inspections in Lahore and Islamabad, each covering 70+ scored checkpoints and a panel-by-panel body map. Nothing is estimated, modelled or copied from other markets. The page updates as our sample grows toward (and past) 100.
How many used cars fail a pre-purchase inspection in Pakistan?
“Fail” depends on your standard, but in our data 5 of 34 cars (about 1 in 7) scored below 5/10 overall — cars we’d tell a buyer to walk away from — while 10 of 34 scored 8+/10 (genuinely good buys). The majority sit in between: buyable, but only at a corrected price.
What is the most common problem with used cars in Pakistan?
Body and paint issues, by a wide margin. 94% of the cars we inspected carried at least one body finding, and paint fade / sun damage alone accounts for 36% of all 562 findings we logged. Mechanically the same cars averaged a healthy 8.3/10 — bodies age much faster than engines here.
What hidden accident signs show up most often?
From our structural checkpoints: a damaged or repaired radiator core support (13 of 34 cars — the classic front-hit tell), rust or repair in the boot floor (10 of 34, the rear-hit tell), repaired pillars (8 of 34) and bent front rails (7 of 34). None of these are visible in seller photos; most aren’t visible without knowing where to look.
Which body panels get damaged most on Pakistani cars?
Doors — the four doors together account for roughly 39% of all body findings we log (tight parking and motorcycle brush-pasts at exactly door height). Fenders come next, then the hood and boot, which mostly collect paint fade from sun exposure.
Are used-car engines in Pakistan generally healthy?
More than most buyers expect. Across our sample the average major-mechanical score is 8.3/10 — engines, gearboxes and brakes mostly hold up. The money risks concentrate in accident history (structure), suspension wear, tyres and dressed-up bodies rather than blown engines.
What suspension problems are most common?
Worn ball joints (11 of 34 cars), steering alignment off (10 of 34), audible suspension noise under real driving (7 of 34) and worn bushes. Individually cheap to fix — but together they’re a reliable negotiation lever and a hint about how the car was used.
How bad is the tyre situation on used cars?
Worn or mismatched tyres were flagged on roughly a third of the cars (front-right on 13 of 34). A full set of tyres is a real rupee cost the buyer inherits on day one — check the DOT date and tread, not just “has tyres”.
Which car brands appear most in your inspections?
Our sample mirrors the Pakistani market: Suzuki leads (13 of 34), then Honda (7), Toyota and MG (3 each), Hyundai (2), plus single Kia, Daihatsu, Changan, Jaecoo, Nissan and Mazda inspections. We publish brand-level patterns only where the sample is large enough to be meaningful.
Is a repainted car always an accident car?
No — Pakistani sun genuinely destroys paint, and an honest respray on a faded panel is common. The question is whether the paint story matches the metal underneath: our paint-thickness meter readings distinguish a cosmetic respray (slightly thick, even) from filler over collision damage (wildly thick, uneven). One car in our case files read 9× factory thickness on a “perfect” roof.
What should I check that sellers hope I skip?
Lift the boot carpet (rust, ripples, fresh underseal), sight down the radiator core support, check pillar welds, put a paint meter on every panel, read tyre DOT dates, and drive it over broken road — not the smooth street the seller suggests. Our full 70+ point checklist covers all of these in order.
Do imported (Japanese) cars inspect better than local ones?
Our current sample is too small to publish a fair imported-vs-local split — we’d rather say “not enough data yet” than invent a number. What we can say: for any import, verify the auction sheet first; the sheet tells you the car’s life in Japan, and the inspection tells you everything since.
How is the CarOK score calculated?
Each report scores 74 checkpoints across major mechanical systems (weighted 45%), minor/comfort systems (15%) and the exterior body map (40%), producing per-system scores and one overall score out of 10, plus an AI risk read and repair-cost estimates on the findings.
Can I see real examples from these inspections?
Yes — our case studies page walks through five real (anonymized) inspections with the actual photos, paint-meter readings and scores, including the hidden-accident import and the full-respray car from this dataset.
Will this study be updated?
Yes. This is a living study — it re-runs on the growing database. Current sample: 34 inspections (July 2026). At 100 we’ll freeze a “First 100” edition and continue tracking the next hundred.
Related tools: AI photo inspection · AI document checker · or let us handle the whole purchase with Buy It For Me. Nationwide options: vehicle inspection service.