Help With M3 Vert Service History

I'm considering buying a M3 SMG vert MY July 2006 with 29,000 km on the clock (Black with Imola Red interior) with many options. I'm in Hong Kong and this is a parallel import car from the UK. Interior is immaculate and reflects the low milage, eg, the steering wheel leather still has a new feel to it (not smooth and shiny) and drivers side seat bolster shows no wear. Externally the car shows normal wear and tear (e.g. stone chips) except there is one mark that hints that someone has used a course sander on it raising concerns of accident damage. The intention is to keep the car long term. I have done the normal web searchs to confirm that its a UK car and identified all the factory options. There is no service history which is typical of used cars in Hong Kong (a low number of previous owners being much more important to the locals). If I buy I will have BMW Hong Kong do a PPI but they will not provide any service history from the UK (privacy laws). Is anyone out there able to provide any BMW UK service history? I want to confirm, 1) milage, 2) maintenance (SMG in particular), 3) accident damage.

I would be most grateful for any help with this. Please PM for VIN number.

Find out if they do have a carfax were you can check car history and maintainace done.

i dont think carfax will work for a car that was never been in the US.

Thanks Vincent M3 and Snik .... checked Carfax and it doesn't recognise my VIN. They haven't covered the UK as yet. But the suggestion prompted a look for similar services in the UK of which there are a few. They all seem to work on car registration number and not VIN but I don't have the old UK registration number. Have sent one service provider an email asking if they can search by VIN ... I would think they must have VINs in their database.

id think if the vehicles was imported to the UK, the vin search thingy should be able to tell something about it.

Snik and Vincent M3 ... thanks for your suggestions ... I found a Carfax equivalent in the UK and they confirmed that the car had done 53,000 miles (85,000 km) as at Sept 2011 .... true to local form, the local Hong Kong dealer has clocked that back to 29,000km!

Holy sh1t!

My sentiments exactly!

So dme was changed to roll,back mileage?

Approx 29,000km is what's showing on the dash board mileage indicator and that's what the website add says,

http://www.emaxautomall.com.hk/catal...l.php?pid=3888

So it was relatively easy to find this out, which suggests a pretty brazen approach to breaking the law there. Is it worth while to report it?

Dude. It's china. C'mon. Who's gonna stop em?

Depressing. So how do you buy a car in HK? Use the proof to get a lower price?

Yeah its not easy trying to verify the km's in HK .... it is rare that a car has a service history no matter how young the car is. I bought a 2002 325 vert in 2003 ... it was one year old but had no service history ... I felt comfortable about it then because it was still under warranty .... the main thing that the locals look at is how many owners its had with the fewer the better. They are not interested in service records or verifying milage. I can only think the logic is that if a car has had many owners e.g. 5+ over 8-10 years it must be a dud that people keep wanting to flick to someone else. Everyone knows that the mileage is meaningless because many cars are clocked back ... someone told me the other day that it's not uncommon for private sellers go to someone who can clock their car back for them before they sell their car at the end of the warranty period. That said, its hard to do a lot of KM's in HK .... its only ~50km from one side to the other at its furthest point. If you take public transport to work and you're wife's not doing the school runs then you'd be hard pushed to drive 3,000km p.a.. But clocking down from 85,000 to 29,000 is a bit much even for HK.