The folder in your NX 350h glovebox is part of the car.
Most buyers will nod at a full history, put the book back on the passenger seat and give you the number they were always going to give you.
Here it gets read. Some of what is in that folder moves the price and some of it does not, and you are better off knowing which is which before anybody turns up.
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The folder
A full history is worth money, and not all of it is worth the same
Sellers of this one usually arrive with more paperwork than anybody asked them for, which is a good problem to have, and it is worth knowing what to put on top of the pile.
You kept everything. The book has a stamp against every service, the invoices are in a wallet or a drawer, both keys are on the hook by the door, the manuals never once left the glovebox and the original mats are folded up in the shed because you put a better set in. Ask most owners of a car like this why they bother and there is no real answer beyond that it is how they do things. Then it comes time to sell, and you expect all of that to count for something. It does.
What surprises people is that it does not all count in the same way. The thing that moves a number is evidence, and evidence is specific. A stamp with a business name on it says who did the work and roughly when. An invoice says what was actually done, what was replaced and what somebody paid for it, which is a different sentence entirely from a car that gets described to us as having been well looked after. Two cars can have had exactly the same care taken over them, and the one with the record behind it is the one that can be paid for it.
So the practical job is getting it into one place beforehand, rather than trying to remember where all of it lives on the day. The book, the invoices even if half of them are emails on your phone, the second key, the manuals, and whatever is in the shed that came off the car and never went back on. Somebody standing in your driveway can only account for what is in front of him. Anything still sitting in a drawer inside the house is a claim rather than a record, and on this car there is no reason for any of it to be a claim.
Before the day
What we ask when the history is all there
None of these is a test and there is no wrong answer in the list. They decide what the inspector spends the visit looking at, and what he can simply read.
- Is the book stamped, and do you know who did the stamping?
- The same place every time, or a dealer at the start and then somewhere closer to home. Both of those are ordinary and both are useful. What we are after is a name against each stamp, because a name is what turns a service history into something a third party can actually check.
- Are the invoices in the car, or in a drawer inside the house?
- This sounds like the smallest question on the page and it is the one that costs people the most. An invoice in the glovebox on the day gets counted. An invoice you are certain exists somewhere is a promise to go and find it, and by then the car has usually been priced.
- Are both keys accounted for, and does the second one still work?
- Worth asking yourself at the start rather than at the end. A spare that has been in a kitchen drawer for years is worth digging out and trying beforehand, because it counts either way and nobody wants to be discovering it while an inspector waits in the driveway.
- Has any panel work been done, and is there an invoice behind it?
- A repair that comes with paperwork and a repair that comes with a story get treated differently, and not because anybody doubts you. One can be read and the other has to be taken on trust. On a car carrying this much record, being able to evidence the one exception is worth more than it sounds.
- Were the original wheels or the original mats kept, and where are they?
- Owners who look after a car like this often put something nicer on it and quietly keep whatever came off. Those parts still belong to the car. Have them in the same place as everything else, because what goes with the car is part of what is being bought and what stays in your shed is not.
- Is anything on it still running on a plan or an agreement in somebody else's name?
- A prepaid servicing plan, a lease sitting in an employer's name, anything bought alongside the car that is still going. Tell us what is attached to it and we deal with it in the right order. Finance and novated lease payouts are settled straight with the financier, and where the payout comes to more than the car is worth you have that shortfall in writing before anything is signed.
However thick the folder is
Three things that are true before anybody opens it
- Evidence gets paid for. A description does not. That is the entire difference between the two, and it is the reason the folder is worth carrying out to the driveway instead of being described from the kitchen table.
- Whatever came off the car still belongs to it. The original mats, the wheels standing in the corner of the shed, the spare key, the manuals in their wallet. Have them together on the day and they are part of what is being bought, rather than a free extra somebody else ends up with.
- The battery gets assessed, not guessed at. On a car carrying a record like this one it sits beside the service history, the body and the kilometres rather than out in front of them, and it is looked at properly rather than marked down on a hunch.
Straight answers
Three questions about the paperwork
Some of my invoices are emails rather than paper. Does that still count?
Yes. An email from a workshop with a date on it and a list of what was done is a record, and a screenshot of it on your phone does the job. Have them open before the inspector arrives rather than searching while he waits, because that is the only part of this that ever goes wrong.
The last few services were not done at a Lexus dealer. Is that a problem?
No. What matters is that somebody can see who did the work and what they did. Tell us where it has been going and why it changed, and have whatever came with those services in the car. A workshop invoice with a name on it does a job that a blank page in a book cannot.
I have kept every single thing. Am I going to be paid extra for that?
That is the honest question and it deserves a straight answer, which is that a record does not add a bonus on top. What it does is stop the guessing, and guessing is what usually costs a well kept car money, because anybody who cannot see the history has to allow for the possibility that there is not one.
Bring the folder out to the driveway and let it count.
Or call us on 03 9000 0075 and talk it through first.