Hail damage on a used car from Japan: why photos don't show it

Hail-damaged cars are mixed in among the used cars for sale in Japan. And you can't tell from photos. That's the short answer.

I work in paintless dent repair. What I can tell you is what follows below. What I can't do is promise how a particular car looks until someone has actually seen it.

Why a photo doesn't show it

With shallow dents, whether they show up depends on how the photo is taken. Take it one way and they can disappear completely. So it's hard to say anything about hail from a listing photo, whichever way it looks.

You can see the same thing with a single dent on our own car: on our page about what dealer photos miss, the dent in the roof only shows in the bend of a reflection.

What photos can't tell you

• Whether there are hail dents at all. A clean-looking photo isn't evidence either way.
• How many there are, or how deep. Even when a few dents show, a photo can't tell you how many more it missed.
• Whether dents have already been repaired. We don't certify repair history.

We look at the car in person, and we photograph what we see. If we couldn't see something, we say so in the report as Not verified. We don't tell you whether to buy.

Worried a car in Japan might have been caught in a hailstorm? Send us the listing and tell us which panels you want looked at.

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Asking the dealer

You can ask the dealer directly whether the car has hail damage. Whatever they say is their answer, and we'd mark it as Reported, not as something we've seen. A Remote Check is where we put that question to the dealer in Japanese for you. We mainly cover the Tokai region (Aichi, Gifu and Mie) for viewings in person; for a car elsewhere in Japan, ask us and we'll quote the travel before you pay.

Written by Yoshiaki Sagara, a paintless dent repair and detailing technician in Japan. He looks at cars for overseas buyers through Ninja Desk Japan. About us

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