You get one proper look at a used car before the money moves. We put it on the lift, scan it, gauge every panel, photograph anything we flag and hand you a written report.
This page is the buyer’s check, the one you want done while the car still belongs to somebody else. The periodic inspection that sits behind your road tax renewal is a different appointment at an authorised inspection centre, and our guide on passing your car inspection first try covers that one.
The two get confused often enough to be worth saying out loud. A car can hold a valid inspection certificate and still be hiding accident repair, a wound-back odometer or a season spent under water.
Each one came out of an inspection we ran here. Names and plates left out, the findings as they were on the day.
A respray covers the panel. It does nothing about what the impact moved behind it. On a 2017 Civic advertised as accident free, the gauge read 480 microns on a panel that should have sat around 120, and the front chassis had been welded. Twenty seconds a panel is all that reading takes.
Ask us to gauge the panels → 02The number on the dash is a display. The ECU keeps its own count, and the two do not always match. A 2019 Vellfire showed 180,000 km on the cluster and 320,000 km in the data. That buyer walked rather than pay low-mileage money for a car that had done nearly double the work.
Ask us to read the ECU → 03Singapore floods in monsoon season. Insurers write some of those cars off and they quietly reappear on the market. A 2016 3 Series came in with new carpets and a new-car smell, and a waterline sitting inside the fuse box. Corroded connectors under the dash finished the story.
Ask us to check for flood damage → 04New mats and a polished dashboard hide nothing a lift and a road test will not find. The transmission judders. The CV joints click. The timing belt went past its change 20,000 km ago. On a 2018 CLA it was four resprayed panels and a cracked gearbox mount, already causing the judder the buyer had felt on his own test drive, and he renegotiated instead of walking.
Ask us to look underneath →The listing and the LTA records cover the same ground between them: who owned the car, how much COE it has left, whether the road tax is current, whether there is finance sitting against it. All useful. None of it shows how well a past accident was actually repaired, whether the odometer has been wound back, or whether the car once spent a week standing in flood water.
A seller can be honest on every line of paper and still hand you a car carrying problems they never knew about. Closing that gap takes a lift, a scan and somebody who has looked at enough used cars to know what does not add up. That is the whole of what this page sells.
If you want the long version before you book anything, our pre-purchase inspection guide works through what a proper check covers and what it will not catch, and used car inspection in Singapore handles the paperwork side of the same purchase.
Nothing here needs a deposit, a form or a phone call you have to schedule. It starts on WhatsApp and it ends with a document.
WhatsApp the listing link, or the make, model and year. During workshop hours you get the price and an available slot back within 30 minutes.
We tell the seller what to expect beforehand so nobody is surprised on the day. You are welcome in the bay, and the road test runs with you in the passenger seat.
Everything flagged gets shown to you with the photo already taken. Ask whatever you want. Nobody is hurrying the bay along.
The written report comes to you. Walk, renegotiate, or buy it knowing exactly what you are taking on. We do not push you either way.
This is the standard inspection in full. Nothing on the list is an optional extra, and nothing gets skipped because the car turned up looking clean.
Every inspection includes a full OBD-II scan, stored codes and pending ones. Pending codes are the faults the car has already noticed but has not yet lit a lamp for, which is exactly the window a seller is hoping you buy inside. No warning lights on the cluster proves very little on its own.
The same scan is where the mileage question gets settled. ECU data goes up against the number on the cluster and against whatever service records came with the car. Three sources, and they either agree or they do not.
There is a second check sitting behind that one. We service high-mileage private-hire and Grab cars every week, the sort that put 100,000 km on the clock in two or three years, so we know what honest wear looks like at any mileage and what a genuinely worn 150,000 km car feels like on the road. A car wound back to flatter its listing rarely reads right once you have handled enough of the real thing.
Every inspection ends with a document rather than a shrug and a hunch. Four things sit inside it.
Grouped by system, so nothing gets lost in a conversation you are half remembering on the drive home. If we looked at it, you can see what we thought of it.
You see the worn part or the resprayed panel with your own eyes instead of taking our word for how it looked. Photos are also what a seller finds hardest to talk their way past.
Buy it as it stands, buy it once you have negotiated, or leave it alone. Written in the same words we would use standing next to you in the bay.
Anything needing attention gets an estimate against it, so nothing surprises you later. Not a firm quote, but close enough to plan around.
The report is yours to keep. Take it back to the seller, sleep on it for a night, or set it beside the report on the other car you are deciding between. Point at a worn clutch, tired suspension or a panel that has obviously been sprayed and the price usually moves, because it is hard to argue with a photograph. And when the car is simply the wrong buy, the report says so while your money is still your money. That is the biggest saving of the lot, even though it never feels like one on the day.
Most workshops hand over a report at the end and leave it there. We would rather you were in the bay while it happens. It is the quickest way to understand the car in front of you, and it is how you learn to spot the same things on the next one without us.
Both are possible. They are not the same inspection, so it is worth knowing what changes when the car stays where it is.
Send us the situation on WhatsApp and we will tell you plainly which of the two your car needs, rather than take the booking and work it out on the day.
Most buyers drive the car down once the seller has agreed to it, and Bedok, Ubi, Eunos and Paya Lebar are all a short run from the unit. Where the car genuinely cannot be moved, we can come to it instead.
Six areas: mechanical, electrical and electronics, bodywork and paint, the interior, a road test and the documentation. That comes to 120 points, and it includes a paint thickness reading on every panel and a full OBD-II diagnostic scan. Whatever turns up goes into the written report with a photo next to it.
Set aside about an hour and a half. Add roughly half an hour if a compression test has been agreed, and another half hour if we are working at the seller’s place rather than at our own bay.
They can, and the refusal tells you most of what you needed to find out. Sellers with nothing to hide and reputable used-car dealers have no problem with an independent check. Treat a point-blank no, or an insistence that the check happens at a workshop of their choosing, as the answer to your question. Walking away at that stage costs you nothing.
Yes, for the same reason you would not let the seller value your trade-in. An independent check is the one nobody else in the deal has had a hand in, so the findings come straight to you, photographs and repair estimates included. A used car carries whatever it has been through, and that does not change because of who is selling it. The report is what gives you something solid to negotiate against instead of a feeling.
We ask for at least two days notice so a bay is held for you and the right tools are ready. Same-day is sometimes possible when the diary allows, so send us the car and the date you are hoping for and we will tell you straight away.
Yes, and we would rather you did. Bring a friend as well if you want a second pair of eyes on it. You do not have to stay for the whole thing, though the walkthrough at the end is the part worth being there for.
Not as standard. On an older engine, a spark plug or coil pack that is already on its way out can break during the test, and that turns into an argument with the dealer over who pays for it. We will run one where both you and the dealer have agreed in writing that neither you nor The Right Workshop carries the cost of any part damaged in the process.
Subject to availability, yes. We will always steer you towards our own bay first, because a car in the air gives up far more than a car sitting in a car park.
You get the facts, the photos and repair estimates for everything we found. The call stays yours. A car with a list of flagged items is sometimes still the right buy at the right price, and we will help you work out what a reasonable renegotiation looks like.
We inspect every car to the standard we hold our own workshop cars to, and the team works to find everything that can reasonably be found by eye, by diagnostics and on a road test without taking the vehicle apart.
Cars are mechanical and electrical machines. Some faults are intermittent, some have been deliberately concealed, and some cannot be seen at all without a full teardown. No pre-purchase inspection by any workshop can promise to find every fault a car has or will develop.
The report states what was checked and what was found. The Right Workshop is not liable for issues sitting outside the reasonable scope of a non-invasive inspection. What you can count on is that our full experience went into the picture you are holding before you commit.
Book a first service with us and the oil, filters and fluids all start from a known date on a fresh record. We can put competitive quotes in front of you through our insurance broker partner, and schedule whatever the inspection flagged.
General servicing at the recommended intervals, with a plain-English report every visit.
Learn more →Insurance claim, damage assessment and repair coordination. We handle it for you.
Learn more →Independent broker, multi-insurer quotes. We compare, you choose.
Learn more →End-of-life and export paperwork handled. Best market value for your car.
Learn more →Dent repair, panel beating and full repaints, colour matched to manufacturer spec.
Learn more →Cooling coil inspection, refrigerant pressure check and air handling service.
Learn more →Tyre fitting, alignment, balancing and battery load testing.
Learn more →Pad thickness, rotor wear, caliper drag and shock condition all measured.
Learn more →
The long version of what a proper check covers, and what no inspection will catch.
Where your new used car gets serviced, and what the two options really differ on.
What the remaining COE on a used car is worth, and how PARF eligibility works.