Average used car in Belgium is 8-year-old VW with 116,000 km

Buying a used car or van in Belgium? You need a Car-Pass, certifying that the odometer has not been tampered with. The agency that hands out those certificates has just published its annual report for 2014. Some interesting results:

* Last year, Car-Pass registered 1,239 cases of mileage fraud, with the odometer turned back an average of 67,300 km. This is a huge step forward: before the introduction of Car-Pass, 60,000 to 100,000 used car odometers were tampered with on an annual basis.

* The progress is due to the pooling of mileage data by all automotive companies involved. In 2014, over 14.7 million kilometers were registered, from 11,283 individual Belgian companies and institutions.

* Car-Pass cannot vouch for the accuracy of the mileage of imported used cars. Which is why the association pleads for a European approach to the issue – and rejoices in the fact that the European Commission has named the Belgian mileage verification system as 'best in class' in the EU.

* In 2014, Car-Pass handed out a total of 780,556 certificates. The most popular used car brand in Belgium was VW (11.7% of all Car-Passes), followed by Opel (8.7%) and Peugeot (8.0%).

* The average age of a used car in Belgium (at the moment of sale): 8 years and 3 months.

* The average mileage: 116,397 km. Highest mileage of all used cars sold in 2014: a whopping 856,243 km!