Used 4x4? Digital odometer? Beware . . .

A confession: Back in the days before Roseann straightened me out, my friend Michael and I once rented a cheap econobox to drive from Tucson to San Jose, California, and back, to see the flat-track motorcycle races there. The least expensive contract specified a total of 200 miles for our rental period—and wouldn’t you know, we turned that car back in with 187 miles on the mechanical odometer.

Employing a bit of legerdemain was easy on those odometers, using little more than a screwdriver and a pen knife. When digital odometers became standard, I remember thinking those days were over.

Apparently not.

A friend recently bought a Toyota pickup advertised with 187,000 miles. Through a bit of miscommunication between husband and wife, the Carfax report was not studied until after the purchase—at which point it was discovered the truck had covered about twice that distance.

It turns out that, with a simple and cheap tool, a digital odometer can be altered with far more ease than a mechanical model. And according to reports such as this one, it’s becoming more and more common.

Caveat emptor.