2008 Dodge Nitro · 268,858 km
A real car, a real analysis. We removed the plate, the VIN and every field belonging to the owner; we changed none of the numbers.
What was hidden, what was not
The plate, the VIN and the personal fields on the registration document are not on this page. Mileage, panel counts, campaign numbers and findings stand as they were: those are what make the case meaningful, and none of them identifies a person.
Document: 33 of 35 panels answered
A five-page inspection report was read in one pass. Of the list's 35 rows, 33 were answered. The remaining two — front and rear bumper — were marked "not in the document", and that claim was verified against the document itself: the report footer states that paint and replacement are not assessed on plastic parts. So nothing was invented; it correctly said "not in the table". The same read also produced 38 mechanical rows.
- 33 / 35
- Panels answered
- 2
- Absent from document (bumpers)
- 0
- Unanswered rows
Airbag: the same finding from three independent sources
What makes the case interesting is a single finding arriving from three separate senses at once. In the document, a record involving the system; on the dashboard, a lit SRS lamp; in memory, an open recall covering the vehicle's model year. The three sources work unaware of each other; all three pointing at the same place is not a contradiction but a reinforcement.
Recalls: three campaigns
The NHTSA lookup returned three open campaigns for this vehicle. The numbers are shown, because an unverifiable recall claim is just a sentence: a reader can search these numbers on NHTSA and find the same record.
- 20V396000 — airbag
- 13V121000 — driveshaft
- 08V525000 — parking brake
- Airbag recall campaignOpen record
NHTSA 20V396000
- Sunroof drain blockage → water through the headlinerChronic
Record stored with its source note
- EU Safety Gate sweepNo record
"No record" and "clean" are written separately
What we did not know: the timing interval
We have no verified service interval for this specific engine, and we put no generic number in the table. The screen says exactly this: "We have no verified interval for this engine — check the manufacturer's handbook." The price of an invented timing-belt interval is the engine itself; leaving it empty sends you to the source, while a wrong number grants false confidence. In the same read, brake fluid could still be calculated: at least eight service periods have passed on an 18-year-old car.
Measured variance
The same document was run several times with the same settings. The panel read returned 33 rows in all five runs — stable for that input class. Mechanical row extraction, however, varied between 26 and 99, and the risk grade moved between B and C. This is the direct reason the product gives a range rather than a point value.
Outcome
We added the estimated cost the findings imply to the value gap against a comparable clean car, and wrote it as a range. That figure is not an offer; it is a starting point for the negotiating table.
153,575–297,963 TRY
A range, not a point value. The low end is the lowest ATO 2026 labour-tariff cost plus the lowest value gap; the high end is the highest cost plus the highest value gap.
All figures are estimated ranges, not firm quotes.
Who keeps the money nobody negotiated over
When a fault you never knew about stays out of the negotiation, the difference stays with the seller. The film walks through one case where it did.
Where the numbers come from
The easiest lie a pre-purchase tool can tell is to sound certain about something it doesn't know. What follows is how we made that lie impossible.
R&D and methodologyBe your own car's expert.