Every used-car listing eventually produces a PDF: fourteen pages of events, icons, and lawyerly hedges that most buyers skim in ninety seconds and sellers summarize in one word — "clean." Today we're shipping the tool we wished existed every time we watched that happen: upload any CARFAX or AutoCheck to CarmaDeal, and about 20 seconds later you get what the document actually proves — with a page citation for every finding.
- The analyzer reads any CARFAX or AutoCheck — uploaded PDF or pasted text — and returns a risk level, an evidence-confidence score, and pre-written seller questions in about 20 seconds.
- It runs deterministic rules, not vibes: the same report always produces the same result, and every finding cites the page it came from.
- It checks what buyers skip: the full title chain, the odometer table line by line, accident severity language, and how much maintenance evidence actually exists.
- It will never tell you a car is "clean" — it tells you what was reported, because that is exactly what a history report proves, and nothing more.
01Stop Skimming — Make the Report Confess Page by Page
History reports are stacks of evidence formatted like verdicts. The summary icons up top blur three very different things — facts explicitly stated, inferences from the timeline, and pure unknowns — into a green checkmark. The analyzer un-blurs them. It parses every dated event on every page, rebuilds the car's timeline, and then classifies each claim in the listing against what the document can actually support. When it flags something, it doesn't say "trust us" — it says page 6, third entry, here's the math.
02Know the Five Checks It Runs Every Time
| Check | What it catches | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Title chain & brands | Salvage, rebuilt, flood, lemon, odometer brands — and rapid state-to-state moves that look like title washing | The one finding no price offsets |
| Odometer math, line by line | Readings that go down, silent multi-year gaps, listings that don’t fit the mileage curve | NHTSA estimates 450,000+ rollback sales a year |
| Accident severity language | "Structural," "airbag deployed," "towed" — graded, with repair follow-up checked | Severity words matter more than the icon |
| Maintenance evidence | Dense service trail vs administrative padding (registrations aren’t maintenance) | Evidence density is its own signal |
| VIN consistency | Report VIN vs your listing’s VIN | The report must describe the car you’re buying |
The analyzer is deliberately incapable of optimism: it never outputs "clean history," only "no title brand was reported." Roughly half of collision damage never reaches a history provider — so the honest unit of analysis is what was reported, not what happened.
Source: CarmaDeal history engine, NICB03Use the Output as a Weapon, Not a Grade
Every analysis ships four things: a risk level for the vehicle, an evidence-confidence score for the report itself (a thin report earns low confidence, not a pass), the seller questions the report can't answer — pre-written for this specific car — and a print-ready inspection work order that tells your mechanic exactly which findings to chase during the $150 PPI. The report the seller handed you as a sales tool leaves as your negotiation file.
04Read It Next to the Deal Score
Analyses save to your garage beside your deal scores, and the two engines cross-check each other: history findings feed the same vehicle record the deal report prices, so a mileage anomaly or brand event doesn't just annotate the history — it confronts the price. A great score on a suspicious history isn't a great deal; now the two documents are forced to agree before you drive anywhere.