High-tech fight against wound-back vehicles

By CHRIS DANIELS consumer reporter

Car dealers will soon have a new weapon in the fight against odometer fraud.

The Independent Motor Vehicle Dealers Association is in the final stages of linking into a Japanese computer system that tracks the history of vehicles being offered at auction.

Association chairman John Nicholls said the database would provide New Zealand's "legitimate vehicle importers with ready access to information on vehicles sold over the past five years."

Up to 300 Japanese dealers use the system to research the history of odometer readings.

"In Japan odometer-winding is a crime just as it is in New Zealand - with some prosecutions for rewinding resulting in a hefty prison sentence," Mr Nicholls said.

The database that he inspected, launched by the Japanese used car dealers and one a major car auction group, was designed to contain information on more than 10 million vehicles.

He said the Japanese Odometer Administration Council had overseen the computer system and had banned vehicle sellers from offering wound-back stock at auctions.

Mr Nicholls said many NZ importers attended these auctions.

He said both the Minister of Customs, Phillida Bunkle, and the Minister of Commerce, Paul Swain, had been told about the association's move to set up links with the Japanese database.

Phillida Bunkle has previously launched a campaign to beef up odometer inspections on used vehicles.

In the six months up to June, she said, four times as many wound-back cars were seized compared with the previous six months.