Woman in UAE buys 'clocked' Mercedes with 145,000km dialled back

A woman who was sold an imported car with a tampered mileage clock has warned other used car buyers to complete a full history check before purchasing a second-hand vehicle.

In March 2023 Emilia Cosbuc, a personal trainer from Romania, bought her dream car, a Mercedes C200, from a dealership in Sharjah. The 2016 model vehicle had 92,000km on the clock and was offered with a one-year warranty.

After a smooth test drive, Ms Cosbuc handed over Dh90,000 for the luxury saloon. There was no indication of any serious mechanical faults until January 2025, when she started to experience engine problems, thinking the car had 150,327km on the clock at this point.

When a mechanic assessed the vehicle, the full reality of the car’s chequered history became clear. Records showed that it had been involved in several accidents, and a major collision in August 2022.

Further online records showed the car was imported from South Africa and sold on at auction in the UAE for $1,700 in November 2022. Then it had 236,748km on its odometer; but four months later, when the car was sold to Ms Cosbuc, the clock showed nearly 145,000km fewer than that.

Rather than the car having travelled 150,327km when it began to have engine problems, as Ms Cosbuc thought, it had actually done 295,027km - a significant and dangerous difference, as 250,000km is generally considered to be the point at which a vehicle has gone through significant wear and tear.

“Initially the car looked great, the test drive was smooth, and the seller gave me a one-year warranty contract - I trusted them and happily bought the car,” Ms Cosbuc, who lives in Abu Dhabi, told The National. “When my car engine needed a major repair, the garage discovered its real history. I spoke to the auction house, which verified the car was sold to an individual in November 2022.

"The photos of the car’s odometer show 236,748km, which means it had been tampered with by the time I bought it. Selling a vehicle with an altered odometer reading and a concealed accident history puts unsuspecting buyers at serious financial and safety risks.”

Victims of fraud have the right to seek compensation for damages, which can cover financial losses and emotional distress. Ms Cosbuc is facing a repair bill of Dh30,000 to get the car back on the road.

As the vehicle is considerably more used than she believed, she asked for compensation from the dealership that sold the vehicle and lodged a complaint with the Ministry of Economy. The company said it was an honest mistake, and admitted they should have completed a more thorough check of the car’s history.

It has since changed its policy to ensure all cars purchased to be sold on are fully researched, and paid Ms Cosbuc Dh40,000 in compensation.

Fines

Car-sale fraud is a criminal offence in the UAE, with legal penalties including imprisonment and fines governed by the UAE’s Consumer Protection Law and Commercial Transactions Law. Odometer tampering is the practice of rolling back a car’s odometer to make it appear to have a lower mileage, to artificially inflate its value.

There is huge demand for used cars across the UAE, with each emirate operating its own safety checks and records for imported vehicles. According to Credence Research, the UAE’s used car market was worth $20.15 billion in 2022, and is expected to climb to $48.14 billion by 2030.

Several e-commerce sites used to advertise second-hand vehicles for sale are improving their transparency when it comes to a car’s history. Despite that, experts say buyers should conduct their own checks on any used vehicle before handing over their cash.

“This market can be a bit of a minefield, so buyers need to be careful,” said Ryan Hughes, co-owner of RMA Motors in Dubai. “If the car is from the GCC it's usually a bit easier to track its history, if it's imported it can be more difficult.

"There are a lot of imported cars that are crash repaired from America, Europe and Canada, and also stolen cars from Canada. A lot of these cars have mileage manipulation, with clocked cars usually coming from North America and Europe.”

Pre-purchase safety checks

As the traffic departments in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah are not connected, it can be difficult to maintain consistency in export papers to show any discrepancies in a vehicle’s mileage. To check for any mileage manipulation, buyers can check a car’s control unit with a mechanic to ensure its chassis number matches what is printed on the car. That can help ensure the mileage matches up with what is on each control unit on the odometer.

“On some cars you can access what is called a service reset counter to make sure that the amount of service resets match the kilometres recorded,” said Mr Hughes. “On a Mercedes you can see if the service intervals have been once a year or every 15,000km. If it was a three or four-year-old car, you could see it would have had three or four service resets in that time, so you could make an estimate of what the kilometres should be.

"But if a car had 25 service resets, for example, you would know it should have 250,000km or more. It’s really about just doing your due diligence from the paperwork you have on the vehicle’s history, as well as a standard inspection and technical evaluation.”