Guide · Basics
Independent 150-point check before you buy a used car in Dubai. In practice it means paint depth gauge across all panels to find accident repairs, plus the checks that confirm the fault was what it looked like.
The used market in Dubai moves fast and a lot of cars in it have histories. An independent inspection before you pay is the cheapest insurance available: paint depth readings across every panel, a full diagnostic scan for stored and pending codes, compression, underbody and chassis inspection, and a written report with photographs that you own — not the seller.
Factory paint is a consistent thickness within a narrow band. A repaired panel reads two or three times that, and a filled one reads off the scale. A gauge sweep takes ten minutes and finds accident repair that a good body shop made invisible. It is the single most informative test on a used car in this market.
Cars are imported into and exported out of the UAE constantly, and some arrive with water history. Corrosion under carpets, silt in the spare wheel well, cloudy headlamp interiors and mismatched seat-rail bolts are the tells. Separately, a car that has spent ten years outdoors here has heat-cracked dash plastics, perished bushes and cooked rubber regardless of mileage.
Dubai compresses every wear cycle a car has. Ambient heat, fine airborne sand and the stop-start driving that most local mileage is made of mean components reach a given wear state at a lower odometer reading than the manufacturer's schedule assumes. Service intervals written for temperate climates are optimistic here, and this job is one of the places that shows.
You should be shown the old part, told what the test read before and after, and given the price you were quoted rather than a revised one. Those three are cheap for an honest workshop to provide and awkward for a dishonest one, which is exactly why they are worth asking for.
About 90 minutes for the inspection itself, and you get the written report with photographs the same day.
Yes for most of the checks. A full underbody and chassis inspection needs a lift, so if the seller will release the car for an hour we would rather do it properly at the workshop.
There is no pass or fail — there is a report of what the car is and what it will need. What you do with that is your decision, and we will price the work so you know the real number.
Call, or send your location on WhatsApp. We will tell you the price before we set off.
