Latest V5 - a retrograde step?

[Magnet]

I've had a definite leaning towards advising all potential buyers to study the V5 and to take as much notice of it as they should of service history. Some would say to the point of boredom! 

My belief is that say a history of 2 short-period ownerships for example would lead to suspicion that the car has been troublesome, and has been quickly offloaded. The V5 would provide that evidence via.the registered keeper and the previous keeper.

Not any longer, since the latest version only shows the registered keeper and simply the number of previous owners - but no details of that previous keeper or how long they had had it. So if your potential purchase has been 'conveniently' registered to the selling dealer/seller to hide the fact that its previous owner was say a school of motoring, or a day hire company then you now just wouldn't have a clue! 

The DVLA has previously provided a service to registered owners whereby they could request details of previous ownership, and this was great for classic car owners who wanted to trace the history of ownership. Now discontinued - probably under some data protection cop out. No doubt though, set youself up as a car parking company, pay DVLA a small charge and up comes the current keeper details! 

Kind regards,

Gareth.

[Audi Owners Club.]

That's a real problem you've highlighted there Gareth. I used to look at such information on the V5 but as you say, it's been consigned to the bin by DVLA.
Had to check out a car for my sister last month and ran a Car Check on it for a couple of quid. This came back with not much more information than you can find elsewhere though....the useful link to check is the DVLA MOT History which does show location of MOT stations and also mileages and what it has failed on...very useful!

Her car (a Toyota Aygo) turned out to have something like 300 miles over 1 year and then the next year 28k miles. After some investigation it appears that it was owned by an old lady and she didn't drive it much so gifted it to a younger relative who then used it for commuting but first thoughts are that there has been something dodgy going on in the past.

[Steve Q]

I agree it is a concern but I believe that a dealer has to tell you who the previous owner was. There's been a couple of cases recently whereby dealers have said the car is one previous owner which has been true but that owner was a high company etc and as the dealers had withheld this information the owners got compensation as it was classed as miss selling.