RAC Car Passport goes live

RAC Car Passport for dealers officially opens for business at 8am on Wednesday 9 March following its launch last month. Until 30 April, RAC will make all checks available at an introductory price of £1. Robert Diamond, managing director of Motoring Services at the RAC, said: “We’ve had a very strong reaction from the market since the announcement of Car Passport for dealers and are talking to a large number of potential customers.

“Dealers appear to agree with our view that this is a market that has suffered from a lack of competition for too long and that they have been paying too much for used car history checks as a result.

“RAC Car Passport for dealers marks a departure. It uses exactly the same data sources as other provenance checks and is effectively identical in specification but offers a much lower cost and the high level of credibility of the RAC name.

“Dealers will instantly recognise that being able to show a used car buyer an RAC Car Passport check will have much more credibility than our competitors, whose brand names mean little to most members of the public.

“An RAC Car Passport check has a genuine value to the consumer as part of the car sale, we believe. It is something that adds a high degree of trust.”

After the introductory period, a pricing structure will take effect:

• £2.99 standard price;
• £2.49 for 5,000 checks or more;
• £1.99 for 10,000-plus;
• and from 99p above 50,000.

RAC believes these prices “undercut the competition by 50 per cent or more,” and there is no monthly subscription fee.

Key features include customer-facing, downloadable RAC Car Passport documentation designed to maximise the credibility of the check, £10,000 of insurance that can be increased to up to £50,000 to protect higher value vehicles, and a mileage adjusted valuation that can be upgraded to a Glass’s valuation for an additional cost.