Motorway, the UK’s fastest-growing used car marketplace, today announced the acquisition of a leading provider of vehicle provenance checks, Total Car Check. The acquisition further strengthens Motorway’s focus on vehicle data accuracy and transparency for its consumer and car dealer customers, and adds Total Car Check’s talented staff to its team.

Total Car Check was founded by David James in 2009, in response to a family member having purchased a stolen vehicle. This experience led David to create an online platform to instantly find out a raft of information about any used car in seconds, enabling a safer and more trusted way to purchase used-cars. Total Car Check’s product now offers highly detailed vehicle background checks, with data points including the car’s previous owners, any accidents or damage it has sustained, MOT and plate change history and more.

Total Car Check has experienced rapid growth, generating over 42 million UK vehicle checks in 2022 alone and increasing revenue by 30% year on year. Along with being a fast-growth, profitable business, Total Car Check is highly regarded by the industry and customers, being rated Excellent on Trustpilot with over 5,000 reviews and winning the Auto Express Best Buy award for Car Data Checks, four years running.

As part of the deal, David James will join Motorway as Director of Vehicle Data, and Total Car Check’s employees will all join Motorway’s growing team of 400+ people across their London and Brighton offices.

The acquisition of Total Car Check further underlines Motorway’s position in the market as a trusted platform for buying and selling cars – harnessing the power of data to create further innovations in the car selling experience for both consumers and car dealers.

In 2022, Motorway recorded another record breaking year, with sales more than doubling to £1.7bn. The volume of cars in their daily online sales has grown 100% year-on-year, providing more choice and depth of stock than ever before. The used-car platform lists over 1,000 cars a day, and is continuing its rapid growth through 2023.

Tom Leathes, CEO and co-founder of Motorway said:

“Since founding Motorway, we’ve created a new set of expectations for used car sales: a great price for your car online, and a seamless user experience where everyone in the transaction wins. The acquisition of Total Car Check is a really exciting step in this journey. We want to continue pushing forward on what’s possible with vehicle data accuracy and transparency online, and to strive to delight our customers at every step in our product experience. The Total Car Check technology and data platform is incredibly powerful, and it will help power some amazing new features to the Motorway experience.

“David is a truly world-class vehicle data expert, and a very inspiring entrepreneur. From working together over the past few months, it’s clear his experience building Total Car Check, his deep subject matter knowledge, and his strong values will be a huge asset to Motorway and our customers. Working with David and his team, we’ll now be able to offer an even greater customer experience, backed by market leading vehicle data.”