Notes on the difference between a car's documented history and a car's claimed history. Mostly written while trying to answer a question about my own folder, and finding that nobody had written the answer down.
Every 996 and 997 buying guide tells you to check the records for IMS work. None of them tell you what that record should look like. Here is what a real invoice contains, and what a thin one is missing.
Rod bearing work is the defining document in an E46 M3 folder. Here is what a genuine invoice lists, including the one part whose absence should stop you, and how to read the rest of the S54 history around it.
The phrase appears in almost every German used car advert. It is worth less than buyers think, and for most cars built in the last fifteen years the real service record is somewhere else entirely.