Did you buy a used car in Hungary? – Its mileage meter might have been rewound
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Winding back the mileage meter or odometer seems to be a huge problem in Hungary. People try to make their used cars appear much younger or in a much better condition so that they can sell it for a higher price. The problem comes when the unsuspecting new owner takes the car to the MOT test or technical examination.
Since 2018, conducting an MOT test has been solely the task of private garages or workshops, but the government’s regulation is unclear on what the workshop has to do with a car on which the mileage meter has been wound back. It seems that almost everyone does it differently, and it has become somewhat normal for some to cheat in order to pass the MOT test; some even told the owner to wind the meter forward so that it shows more than during the previous roadworthiness test.
It is not worth winding it back less than 100,000 kilometres
According to Szabadeurópa, the case they heard about happened to have a 371,000-kilometre odometer wound back to just 281,000. A car mechanic told Szabadeurópa that, usually, if people wind the odometer back, they do it by 100-150,000 kilometres. “It is not worth touching the mileage meter under that in many cases,” he said.
When the owner in this particular case arrived at the workshop, they told him that they will not let the car pass the MOT. They then told the owner of two ways he could “fix” the problem. The mechanic said that either the owner could wind the odometer forward to correct the fraud or he could get a receipt from a scrapyard for a new odometer as if it needed to be replaced due to error. When the editorial office of Szabadeurópa called the same workshop, the owner said that they simply do not conduct the MOT for a car that has its odometer tinkered with, but the regulation does not state what is the necessary procedure in such cases.
According to the Hungarian Penal Code, a person who falsifies the data of the mileage meter of a car can be imprisoned for up to a year.
Can the test be conducted?
The 2018 regulation does not state directly that a car with a falsified mileage meter cannot undergo the MOT test; what is more, not even a spotless pedigree is criteria: the car could pass the test even with a tinkered odometer, although some things are unclear within the regulation. According to the Ministry of Innovation and Technology, the standard procedure is to treat this situation as if the car did not pass the test. In this case, the owner gets two months to perform repairs before a mandatory second MOT. The issue is that the odometer’s problem can only be solved by tinkering with it again or by unofficially replacing it.