The car documents to keep are the ones that answer three questions a buyer, an insurer or a lender will ask: is this the car it claims to be, did it come to you honestly, and has it been looked after? A folder that answers all three, in date order, is worth more than a bigger folder that answers none of them.
Car documents to keep, in one list
Most of a car's history is written by other people: the registration authority, the testing station, the garage, the restorer, the inspector, the insurer. Keep what they gave you, and keep it in the order it happened.
| Document | Why keep it | Who issues it |
|---|---|---|
| Registration certificate (V5C) | Names the registered keeper and carries the VIN and registration. Evidence of the keeper, not of ownership | DVLA |
| Bills of sale and purchase invoices | Show each change of hands: the chain of ownership the V5C does not | The seller, dealer or auction house |
| VIN, chassis plate and engine number photographs | Tie every other document to this car; for a motorcycle, the frame number too | You, from the car |
| MOT history | Each test result with its recorded mileage: the independent spine of the mileage record | DVSA |
| Service history | The stamped book plus the invoices and parts lists behind it, each with the mileage, in date order | Franchised dealer or independent garage |
| Restoration photographs and invoices | Show what was replaced, repaired or rebuilt, stage by stage | The restorer |
| Inspection reports | A pre-purchase or independent inspection records the car's condition on a date, by someone with nothing to sell | Independent inspector |
| Valuations and the agreed-value insurance schedule | What the car was insured for and on what basis, before anything went wrong | Valuer, insurer |
| Build record, club and concours entries | For a classic: the manufacturer or archive build record, previous keepers' correspondence, club register entries and concours results | Manufacturer archive, owners' club, concours organiser |
| Dated photographs | The car's condition at a known date, especially before and after work | You |
The car documents to keep, with who issues each one. On a classic, the last three rows carry as much weight as the first three.
The V5C is not proof of ownership
The registration certificate is the document people reach for first, and it answers a narrower question than most think. The V5C is evidence of the registered keeper - the person responsible for the car on the road - not of who owns it. So it sits beside the bill of sale rather than in place of it.
Keep the bill of sale or the purchase invoice from every change of hands you have, not only your own. Each one names a seller and a buyer on a date; together they are the chain of ownership. On a car that has passed through a dealer or an auction house, their invoice is the strongest link in that chain, because the business that sold it has its own records behind it.
Mileage: the thread that ties the file together
Mileage is the one figure that appears on almost every document a car collects: the MOT history, the service invoices, the inspection report, sometimes the bill of sale. That is what makes it useful. A buyer reads the readings in date order and expects them to rise, steadily, at a pace that matches the car's story.
- Keep invoices, not just stamps. A stamp in the service book says a garage saw the car; the invoice says what was done, which parts were fitted and what the odometer read.
- File in date order. A gap is easier to explain when it is visible - a car laid up for a winter, a restoration that took two years - than when it is found by someone else.
- Note the reading yourself when you buy, sell or store the car, with a dated photograph of the odometer.
Who issued a document matters more than how many you have
Ten receipts you wrote out yourself prove less than one inspection report from someone independent. That is not a judgement on owners; it is how every reader of a car's history already weighs evidence. Property Vault makes that weighting explicit and publishes it.
The published rules engine that runs the Homes pilot weights each document by the class of its issuer: Building Control 1.0, a registered professional 0.9, a firm 0.7 and an owner-provided document 0.4, with owner-only evidence capped at 65. Weights for vehicles are not yet published. The result is the Vault Score, a verification score - whether the documents exist, who issued them and that they are unaltered since issue; never a valuation, a credit input or a judgement of the work.
Owner-provided evidence counts, and it is labelled as owner-provided: it is never presented as verified. The way to lift a record is to have the garage, the restorer or the inspector issue their part of it.
What a car history check covers, and what it does not
Many buyers of a used car pay for a history check. It answers one day's question - is there finance outstanding, has it been written off, is it reported stolen - against registers filled in by the institutions that must record finance, write-off and theft data. That is valuable, and it is not a history: it says nothing about what was done to the car or who did it.
Finance, write-off and theft data belong to the organisations that collect them. If a Vault ever shows a finance marker it will be under a data agreement with the source named; finance-marker checks are on the roadmap, require a data contract and are never shown without the source. The car documents to keep, listed above, are the other half: the life of the vehicle rather than one day's check.
How to keep car documents so they follow the car
Paper follows a car only if the seller remembers to hand it over. Three habits make the file survive:
- Keep the originals. A scan is a convenience, not a replacement for the issuer's document.
- Scan each one on the day and name it by date and issuer, so the digital copy stays in order.
- Hand the file over at sale, with the V5C and the bill of sale, and keep a copy of what you handed over.
A Vault is designed to do this for you. One Vault ID per vehicle, keyed to the VIN; the VIN and the registration are held encrypted, off-chain and never public. Every document is hashed on upload and given an integrity receipt - the hash and time that prove it has not changed since. Originals are kept; corrections are stored as new versions. At sale the record is designed to move to the new owner with every document and receipt intact, without your personal details. The Verified History explains how events and documents are recorded.
Where the Vehicles class stands
Launching
Property is the class in the pilot today. Vehicles - cars, classics and motorcycles - follows watches and jewellery, launching with the dealers, restorers and inspectors who register it. Adapters for DVSA MOT history and the DVLA Vehicle Enquiry Service are built against recorded test data and are not switched on; the Vehicles page says what each will add when it is.
Until then, the list above works on paper. If you want the file in a Vault when the class opens, register interest; an owner's Vault is free. If you sell, restore or inspect cars, you are the registering party a car's record needs: see dealers and auction houses.
Sources: Department for Transport vehicle licensing statistics, Apr 2026 · SMMT used car sales, 2025 · Association of British Insurers, detected fraud figures, 6 Oct 2026. Organisations are named as the issuers of documents that exist, not as partners.