Around half of all second-hand car sales in France through professional car dealers are legally non-compliant, according to French consumer protection officials.

The second hand car market in France is huge, accounting for around 5 million sales a year, or three out of every four cars sold in the country.

In a major investigation into the sector, French consumer protection officials at the Direction Générale de la Concurrence, de la Consommation et de la Répression des Fraudes (DGCCRF) uncovered widespread malpractice.

The investigation team undertook over 5,000 vehicle checks, in the process overcovering an infraction rate of 47%.

Perhaps not unsurprisingly, most of these anomalies were found amongst independent second-hand car dealers rather than the main car distributors.

In the case of the former the report found "Le caractère systématique et récurrent de pratiques illicites a pu être observé."

The major irregularities encountered were:

• Incomplete or imprecise information on the essential characteristics of the vehicle, such as the brand, model, and date of vehicle registration.
• Some dealers presented vehicles as being those of a superior classification, having removed key markings, but which under close examination were still faintly visible.
• The prices of some vehicles were incorrectly displayed, omitting the 20% VAT payable.
  
• Vehicles that were claimed to have previously had only one-owner, when an examination of the registration record revealed several owners.
  
• Car hire or driving-school cars sold without indicating this as the previous type of usage, or second-hand vehicles being displayed in new car showrooms or fairs.
• Car registration documents that had been altered, most notably where it had been registrered abroad.
• Vehicles being sold as previously belonging to a former director of a company, when this was not the case.

• Cars being advertised at a reduced in price, when the basis of the reduction was not evident.

The investigation also revealed numerous examples of clocked cars, in some cases with difference of over 100,000 kilometres between the recorded figure and the actual number of kilometres undertaken.

The report pointed out the difficulties of tracing clocked cars that had been imported from elsewhere in Europe, although it expressed hope that the harmonisation of MOT testing across Europe by 2018 should reduce the scope for this to occur.

Finally, the investigators also found dealers who failed to provide the customer with a MOT certificate (procès-verbal de contrôle technique) prior to the sale. As these certificates are only valid for six months, some dealers do not have the MOT undertaken until the car is sold.