Almost €7 million worth of ‘Zombie’ cars on Clare roads

ANALYSIS by a car history check company has revealed a significant amount of imported cars being driven in Clare that have been salvaged or written-off despite being sold as “all clear”.

An investigation by MotorCheck.ie estimates the market value of these so-called ‘Zombie’ cars in the Banner County to be as high as €7m.

The company identified 39,336 such vehicles with a total market value of €318 million being driven on Irish roads and has conceded that the true figure may be even higher.

Examples of Zombie cars were found currently for sale privately and on dealers’ forecourts with ‘All Clear’ histories.

Despite the introduction of new Brexit-linked import charges, the number of vehicles imported from the UK to the Republic of Ireland remains high. In 2021 over 83,000 vehicles have been imported with a total of 457,000 coming across the water over the past four years.

In an effort to understand the prevalence of Zombie vehicles (those brought back to life but not correctly identified as insurance write offs or ex-salvage) amongst those being imported, MotorCheck embarked on the largest single cross border analysis of vehicles ever carried out between the Republic of Ireland and the UK.

In so doing, the company cross referenced the VIN numbers for 1.9 million Irish vehicles with its UK Salvage database.

Shane Teskey, co-founder of MotorCheck said, “We know that almost 40,000 Zombie cars have been imported into the Republic of Ireland – those brought back to life but not necessarily identified as insurance write offs or ex-salvage.

“This equates to €318m leaving traders or their owners to foot the bill when the car’s true history is discovered. With used car prices rising in Ireland as much as 50%, it’s more important than ever that car dealers and private buyers are made aware of a vehicles hidden history before they pay well over the fair market value for a potentially dangerous ex-write off.”

Irish motorists can check if their car is one of the identified vehicles by visiting www.motorcheck.ie and clicking the red banner at the top of the site to check any registration.

Two investigations carried out by the BBC* and Channel 4* demonstrated that tens of thousands of vehicles are written off annually in the UK, yet are unrecorded on the official insurance database, making MotorCheck the UK and Ireland’s premier provider for this hidden history.