The automotive market is rapidly changing every year, but some tendencies and popular car sellers scams still remain the same. IT data company carVertical announced the yearly report for 2021 with annual statistics for the automotive community.

The company gathers information on vehicles from databases using VIN codes and generates car history reports. All facts are based on carVertical data.

1. The most damaged car on the market is BMW

The damage statistics are even more impressive: all the reports combined add up to 3,282,580,416 EUR in damages.

What’s interesting is not all cars get into accidents as much as others. It may be no surprise that BMWs top the damage lists – 47.77% of all BMWs on the market are damaged.

On the flip side, only 29.53% of Fiats have failed to avoid a pummeling.

2. Odometer fraud is still extremely common: 18.5% of checked cars have tampered

According to the car history reports generated throughout the year, mileage rollbacks are among the most common ways car buyers get scammed.

18.5% of all reports this year showed signs of odometer tampering. In pure numbers, that’s 7,112,444,874 km rolled back across all vehicles checked.

3. Most likely to get stolen: Škoda Octavia

In 2021, thieves continued to steal and shady sellers continued to offer cars provisioned by them. The best way to avoid stolen cars is to check car history.

Last year, the car history reports company generated 672 reports for cars marked “stolen”.

This data revealed that the most stolen car model was Škoda Octavia with 38 stolen units.

Going on reports, Octavia is 3.75 times more likely to get stolen than your neighbour’s BMW 3 Series. That means Škoda owners should be extra careful and take good care of their cars.

4. Favorite cars 2021: BMW, Volkswagen, and Audi

Based on report data, BMW, Volkswagen, and Audi are the most popular car makers. Combined, they account for 13% of all the cars checked on the platform.

Specifically, the BMW 3 Series is the people’s favorite and accounts for approximately 5% of all carVertical history reports.

VW Passat and Audi A4 are not far behind, while models by other manufacturers make an appearance lower in the top 15.

Other popular car models on this list are BMW 5 Series, VW Golf, Audi A6, Škoda Octavia, Mercedes-Benz E-Class, Opel Astra, Mercedes-Benz C-Class, Ford Focus, Audi A3, BMW X5, Škoda Superb, and BMW 1 Series.

5. The oldest of checked car models is BMW

There are more old BMWs than almost any other car. 40.38% of the BMWs you checked in 2021 were manufactured between 1990 and 2010.

Meanwhile, for VW and Audi, those numbers are only 14.56% and 19.97%.

And the percentage of older cars falls even lower for a maker like Citroën – only 10.92%.

Only counting newer vehicles makes BMW look worse. As many as 52.06% of BMWs built after 2010 are damaged.

carVertical is an IT data company building a global car history register. The rapidly growing company has more than 70 employees and operates in 25 different markets. In 2020, the firm’s sales revenue was €8.5 million. The company doubled its growth in 2021.