There is a version of a pre-purchase inspection that consists of walking round the car, plugging in a code reader, driving it to the end of the road, and pronouncing it fine. It takes twenty minutes and it is worth roughly what it costs.
What follows is what we do instead, and more importantly why it is built the way it is.
Seventy-six checks, and then the ones that matter to you
The inspection has a fixed structure: 76 individual checks covering the engine and its ancillaries, the transmission and driveline, brakes, suspension and steering, tyres, the electrical system and every control module, the body and paint, the interior and its electronics, and a road test. Every car gets all of them, in the same order, whether it is a Golf or a Cayenne.
That is the floor, not the ceiling. The seventy-six are what stops anything being missed. What actually finds the expensive problems is the layer on top of them — the checks that exist only because of what your specific car is.
The idea the whole thing is built on
European cars do not fail randomly. They fail in patterns, and the patterns are known.
A 2013 BMW 328i does not have a general risk of engine trouble. It has a specific risk: the N20 timing chain guides crack, the chain goes slack, and if it is left long enough the valves meet the pistons. That risk lives in a known production window and announces itself with a rattle on cold start that lasts a second or two and then disappears.
A V8 Cayenne does not have a general risk of overheating. It has coolant pipes running through the engine valley, under the intake manifold, where a leak evaporates on hot metal before it can ever reach the ground.
An M272 Mercedes does not have a general risk of timing problems. It has a balance shaft gear that was made too soft, wears its teeth away, and reports itself as a camshaft correlation code.
None of those are found by a walk round the car. All three are found in minutes if you know to look, and all three are the difference between a car you should buy and a car you should walk away from.
So the seventy-six run every time, and the make, model, engine and year decide what gets added to them. A fixed checklist on its own is thorough about the wrong things; a fixed checklist plus the model's own history is what catches the fault that costs an engine.
What that looks like in practice
Before the car goes on the lift we establish exactly what it is — engine code, production date, specification — because on some of these faults a few months of build date is the whole answer. Then the known weak points for that specific car are checked deliberately and by name.
The fault library we work from is published on this site. It is not marketing; it is what we go looking for:
BMW N20 and N26 timing chain · Audi and VW 2.0 TFSI chain tensioner · Mercedes M272 balance shaft · Mercedes 722.9 conductor plate · Mercedes AIRMATIC · Porsche Cayenne coolant pipes · Porsche oil leak points · Range Rover air suspension
If you are buying one of those cars, you can read in advance exactly what we will be checking and why. We would rather you did.
Every module, not just the engine
A handheld code reader talks to the engine control unit and reads standard emissions codes. A modern European car runs dozens of modules — transmission, suspension, body, comfort, driver assistance, and more.
We scan every module and the full readout goes in your report. This matters more than it sounds, for two reasons.
The first is that a car can show a clean bill of health on a basic reader while carrying a stored fault in the transmission or suspension module. “No codes” is frequently not true; it is just not visible with the wrong tool.
The second is recently cleared codes. A seller who scanned and wiped the car the morning you came to see it leaves traces — readiness monitors that have not completed, adaptation values that have been reset. That pattern is its own finding, and it tells you something about the seller as well as the car.
We measure. We do not tick.
This is the part we would defend hardest.
“Brakes: pass” is close to worthless. Pass against what? A pad at 4mm passes. So does a pad at 11mm. One of those cars needs brakes within months and the other does not, and the word “pass” hides the difference completely.
So the report carries numbers:
Brake pad and disc thickness in millimetres, per corner, against the manufacturer’s minimum.
Tyre tread depth in millimetres, per tyre, plus the date code — because a tyre with plenty of tread and six Jeddah summers behind it is not a good tyre.
Paint thickness readings around the body, which is how repainted panels and filler are found rather than guessed at.
Battery condition under test rather than by age.
Fluid condition, and where the car has been serviced, against what the records claim.
Numbers let you do something a tick cannot: negotiate. “The front pads are at 4.2mm of 12” is a conversation with a seller. “The brakes are a bit worn” is not.
Photographed, not described
Every finding is photographed. Not a stock diagram with a red circle on it — your car, on our lift, with the fault in frame.
Partly that is so you can see what we saw without taking our word for it. Mostly it is because a photograph is evidence you can put in front of a seller, and a sentence in a report is an opinion they can argue with.
Same day
Used cars in this market move quickly, and an inspection that takes three days is an inspection that arrives after somebody else has bought the car.
Bring it in the morning and you get the report the same day. That is deliberate: it exists to be useful while you still have a decision to make.
What we do not do
We do not tell you whether to buy the car. That is not modesty, it is the correct division of labour — you know what you want to spend and what you are willing to live with, and we do not. What we do is make sure the decision is an informed one.
We also do not inspect a car we are selling you, because we do not sell cars. There is no version of this where we benefit from the answer being yes.
The half of it that is not mechanical
An inspection tells you about the car. It does not tell you about the paperwork, and the paperwork ruins more purchases in Saudi Arabia than worn suspension ever has — the Mojaz history report, matching the VIN across the chassis and the istimara, outstanding fines and finance, and the fact that ownership transfer on Absher will not complete without insurance already active in the buyer’s name.
That side is covered in the used car checks that are not mechanical. Do that part first — it is free, it happens on your phone, and it eliminates cars before anyone drives across Jeddah.
Booking it
Agree with the seller to meet us on Al Andalus Road, or arrange for the car to come to us between viewings. Most sellers with nothing to hide are fine with this; a seller who refuses has told you something for free.
Pricing depends on the car, so message us on WhatsApp with the model and year. Full details of the service are on our pre-purchase inspection page, and if it is a German car generally, 7 checks before buying a used German car in Jeddah is worth reading before you view.
The one thing worth repeating: an inspection is worth a great deal on the car you are about to buy, and nothing at all on the one you already bought.