Spain imported 55,241 used cars from abroad between January and March 2026, almost 11% of all new registrations in that period. For most, the original mileage goes unchecked, leaving buyers exposed to odometer fraud and hidden wear.
A ten-year-old German sedan went on sale in Valencia with 87,000 kilometers on the clock. The paperwork looked fine and the plates were Spanish; the odometer reading seemed low. But the new owner had no idea the car had already covered 164,000 kilometers in Germany just a year earlier. The missing 77,000 kilometers meant the buyer paid thousands too much and faced a real risk of costly repairs.
These imports averaged 10.5 years old, and more than 20% had already spent over fifteen years on foreign roads before coming to Spain. Information from CARFAX data cited by Spanish media, 56% of used cars changing owners in Spain in the first half of 2026 had at least one risk factor. Imported vehicles had an average mileage of 192,888 kilometers.
Germany sends the most cars, 44% of the total, usually newer models with better equipment that meet Euro 6 rules. France is next, but its exports are older and many do not qualify for that environmental class. Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy account for most of the rest. Registration is straightforward because 86.6% of these cars come from inside the European Economic Area, but the original mileage is rarely checked against what is recorded in Spain.
Coral Sevillano, deputy director of vehicles at the DGT, points out the trade-off: importing a Euro 5 car can be an improvement if it replaces a worn-out Spanish model from 2005. But buyers may miss out on a new car with the latest safety technology now required by Brussels. A bigger problem is that neither Sevillano nor anyone at the DGT can say how many imported cars come with a full service history. Spain has no system to check that data.
The problem extends across Europe. Every year, 60 million used cars change hands in the EU. In January 2025, a parliamentary question to the European Commission cited estimates that 5% to 12% of used cars sold within a single country have tampered odometers. For cross-border sales, the rate rises to 30% to 50%, depending on the source and trade route.
Spanish media, citing DGT and sector studies, report that among used cars checked in Spain, 39% showed signs of previous accidents and 13% were ex-rental. Another 10% were imported, while 2% had mileage discrepancies. The DGT has collected odometer readings from ITV inspections since 2013, but has no mechanism to verify imported vehicles’ full service histories at registration.
Spain, Italy and several Eastern European countries are often cited as places where odometer fraud is rarely pursued. Belgium’s Car-Pass and the Dutch Nationale Auto Pas record every odometer reading in national databases that buyers can consult. Fraud in those countries is almost wiped out. Spain, by contrast, records mileage only at mandatory inspections every two years, with the first check due four years after registration.
Data from vinnumber.net, a vehicle-check platform, shows a large gap between the first official mileage reading and the point when an imported car is sold in Spain. Any tampering before the car crosses the border disappears from Spanish records. The figures come from the platform’s own user checks, so they are not a complete sample, but they show the trend.
Odometer fraud costs European buyers about 5.3 billion euros a year. In Spain, verification platforms find tampering in about 3.25% of the cars they check. Across Europe, buyers pay about 21% too much for a car with a rolled-back odometer. More expensive cars in the 40,000 to 45,000 euro range are targeted for higher profits, but the highest fraud rate, about 7.5%, affects cars sold for less than 5,000 euros, where paperwork is often missing or incomplete.
Criminal groups have turned these loopholes into a business. Operation Nimmersatt, run by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office with Europol, broke up a network that bought wrecked cars from US insurers and brought them into the EU through shell companies in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Romania. The network repaired the cars and sold them as accident-free. The Lithuanian group alone moved at least 16,500 cars worth 144 million euros, evading at least 31 million euros in taxes and VAT. Buyers were left with unsafe cars presented as good deals.
Spain was one of twelve countries with open cases in the operation. In April 2026, the Berlin regional court received the first charges against three traders accused of running a criminal group and helping with VAT fraud worth about 15 million euros.
In April 2025, the European Commission proposed reforms that would require every EU country to set up a national odometer database like those in Belgium and the Netherlands. The plan also calls for digital registration and inspection certificates, cross-border data sharing and measures to stop odometer tampering. EU transport ministers agreed on the basics in December 2025. By April 2026, the European Parliament had started talks to complete the law.
For now, Spain continues to register tens of thousands of used imports every quarter. Most arrive with mileage histories Spanish authorities cannot check or challenge. Without a strong national database, buyers remain exposed, and fraud can be almost impossible to spot after a sale.
For comparison, the Spanish government recently bought new unmarked cars for police, as reported earlier. The purchase shows that upgrades can happen quickly when there is political will. In the used-car market, but, rules lag behind and buyers pay the price.
Without a public, reliable record of a car’s real mileage, Spain remains an easy target for odometer fraud. Until the EU reforms become law and Spain builds a real-time, tamper-proof mileage database, every used-car import carries a risk. Trust in the market and the safety of Spanish roads depend on closing this loophole.
