How to find a reliable used car in Ireland

Most people start by browsing, fall for a particular car, and then look for reasons to justify it. Do it the other way round.

Before you open a listings site, decide which two or three models you're actually willing to buy, and at what age. This matters more than anything else on this page, because reliability varies enormously between models — and, less obviously, within the same badge. A BMW 325 passes the NCT at 68.8%; a BMW 320 passes at 48.9%. A Toyota Verso S passes at 78.5%; a Toyota Verso, nearly the same name, at 45.7%.

Age matters as much as model, and this is the part almost nobody accounts for. Some cars decline gently; some fall off a cliff. A Nissan Qashqai at five years is an ordinary, unremarkable car — it passes the NCT slightly more often than the national average for its age. The same model at twelve years passes 26.3% of the time, which puts it third from bottom out of 306 models we hold data on.

Same badge, same car, opposite advice. "Is a Qashqai a good car?" has no answer. "Is a 2019 Qashqai a good car?" does.

These take seconds each and rule out most of the market.

• One or two previous owners is ideal. More is acceptable on older cars, and normal on anything over fifteen years.
• How long the last owner kept it tells you more than how many owners there were. A car someone kept for eight years was usually a car someone looked after.
• No service history is a real risk, not a negotiating point. You are buying the maintenance as much as the car, and you can't see it.
• Accident history is usually a reason to move on. There are plenty of cars.
• Eight or more photos, inside and out. A seller who took four photos is telling you something.
• Look at the background of the photos, not just the car. A tidy forecourt or a well-kept driveway is a signal. So is the opposite.
• Filtered or heavily edited photos are worth treating as a warning. So is a car photographed only in the rain, or only at dusk.
• Read the description properly. A seller who has made an effort to tell you about the car is a better bet than one who wrote two lines. Detail is cheap to provide and sellers with something to hide rarely bother.
• Look for tells in the photos — an oil bottle in the boot, a new-looking panel that doesn't quite match, wear on the driver's seat that doesn't match the mileage.
• A tow bar isn't a dealbreaker, but it's a question: what was towed, how often, and how heavy? A small-engined car used to pull a caravan has had a much harder life than the mileage suggests, and nothing in the paperwork will tell you.

This uses DoneDeal as the example. The approach works on any listings site; if a filter isn't available, the information is usually still in the advert, and if it isn't, ask.

1. Open the full search. Select search (all cars) to get the complete filter set rather than the simplified one.
2. Pick your makes and models. The two or three you decided on above. Not “any.”
3. Set the year range deliberately. You should already know which model years are the good ones — which had the recalls, which had the problem engine, and where the reliability curve for that model starts to turn down.
4. Set your budget wider than your budget. Minimum around €1,500–€2,000 below what you plan to spend, maximum about €1,000 above. The low end surfaces cars priced below market, which do exist. The high end gives you something to negotiate on. Use Total Price, never per month — monthly figures hide finance costs and will have you spending more than you think.
5. Transmission and body type, if you have a preference. Automatics usually cost more to buy. Whether they hold value better depends on the model, so treat any specific claim about that with suspicion — but if you find an automatic at manual money, it's worth a look.
6. Leave fuel type as “Any” unless you have a reason. As a rough guide, petrol suits mostly-urban driving and diesel suits regular long runs. Buying a diesel for short journeys is a common and expensive mistake.
7. Set the seller type. Dealers are more accountable — they have a reputation and legal obligations to you that a private seller doesn't, and they'll provide some form of warranty, usually a limited one. Private sales can be cheaper and sometimes better, but you carry all the risk.
8. Ignore the first few results. They're paid spotlight ads and may not even match your criteria.
9. Set country of registration to Ireland to avoid cars that still need to be imported and VRT paid. If you're willing to handle that, imports can be an opportunity — but price the VRT before you get attached.
10. Set road tax slightly above your comfort level. A car with higher running costs may be a better car for the money, and that can be a trade worth making knowingly.
11. Sort by lowest price to surface anything priced below market.
12. Note what kind of dealer it is. Franchise dealers answer to a manufacturer, tend to prepare cars more thoroughly, and charge for it. Independents range from excellent to careless. Both can sell you a great car; they just carry different risks.

When two similar cars differ this much in price or mileage, one of them is wrong, and finding out which is the whole job.

By now you should have a handful of cars. Before you drive anywhere, look at who is selling them.

Look for at least 100 reviews for a garage or dealership. Fewer than that and you can't tell the difference between a good business and a lucky one. Expect a mix — every business has unhappy customers — and pay most attention to reviews written months after purchase rather than on the day. Those are the ones that tell you whether the car was still fine in March.

If you're local, ring a garage you trust and ask whether they know the seller. Trade reputation travels, and in Ireland it travels fast.

Always before you travel, and always before an inspection. Things get left out of adverts, sometimes deliberately and sometimes not.

• Service history — do they have it, and what's been done recently? Timing belt, brakes, clutch, wheel bearings?
• Number of previous owners — a seller should have a vehicle history report that confirms it.
• Was it imported? A car advertised as one or two owners may have had others before it arrived in Ireland. Irish history checks don't always see them.
• Any accident history?
• Say you'll be having it independently inspected, and ask if that's fine. This is the single most useful question on the call. A seller with nothing to hide says yes. Any hesitation is your answer, and you've saved yourself a drive.
• Then ask the open one: is there anything else I should know now rather than find out at the inspection? Oil use, leaks, electrical faults, a window that doesn't go up. Having just agreed to an inspection, an honest seller will usually tell you. It's a surprisingly effective question.

If the car survives all of that, it's earned a proper look. That's a separate job, and we have a checklist for it — 47 points across five steps, with eight dealbreakers that should end the viewing on the spot.

If you've used the rating tool, the checklist comes back reordered for that exact model, so the things most likely to be wrong with that car are at the top instead of buried on page three.