I Timed It: Changing a Car Online, From Number Plate to Signed Offer
A hands-on walkthrough of changing your car with carwow UK: enter your registration, see what dealers offer, then compare new, used and lease deals in one sitting.
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The first box only wants your registration
I set aside an afternoon to see how far I could get. The home page of carwow UK gives you three doors: find a car, sell my car, read reviews. I started on the selling side, because knowing what your current car is worth changes every decision that follows.
The form asks for one thing to begin with: your vehicle registration. The line printed next to it is plain enough — sell your car fast, fair and without fees — and the same tool appears under Value my car if you want a number rather than a sale. There is a Sell my van option too, plus sell-my-car pages grouped by location such as London, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Glasgow, and by make, including Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Tesla.
If you are planning to trade in rather than sell outright, there is a part exchange section inside your account, so the old car and the new one stay in the same place instead of being two separate errands on two separate sites.
Who is on the other end of that listing
This is the part that decides whether the number you see is worth anything. Carwow UK says it connects you with all the major manufacturers and thousands of hand-picked dealers, and the company’s own figures put it at more than 6,000 trusted dealer partners. Your car is not sitting in front of one buyer who knows you have nowhere else to go.
The scale behind it is not small either. Over 12 million customers have used the site to buy or sell, there are 12M+ registered users, and last year nearly £3 billion worth of cars were bought through the site while £1.8 billion of cars were listed for sale via the Sell My Car service.
Customers rate it ‘Excellent’ on Trustpilot, with a 4.3-star rating across 85,902 reviews. That is the backdrop while you wait to see what your plate is worth.
Switching tabs, from selling to shopping
With the sell side running, I moved across to the buying tabs along the top: New, Used, Leasing, Electric, Sell, Vans. Each one is a different way of ending up in a car, and they sit side by side rather than on separate sites.
Underneath the search box there are quick filters — EVs, Lease, New, Used, Vans, SUVs, Hybrids, Big boot, Below £30k — plus browse buckets for new in-stock, lease monthly, under £20k, under £30k, under £40k, or open budget. Picking two or three narrowed a vague idea into a short list quickly. The deals section also sorts by 0% car finance, no deposit finance, immediate delivery and quick delivery EVs.
The electric listings show the maths up front. The Skoda Elroq is listed with an average saving of £4,212 off RRP, cash from £29,807 or lease from £287 a month. The Renault 5 E-Tech shows an average saving of £3,942, cash from £21,051. There is also an EV grant worth up to £3,750 flagged on eligible models.
Reading up without losing the afternoon
Between filtering and shortlisting, I used the review tools. Snapshot reviews are described as speed dating for cars: short video reviews you watch, save what you like and dismiss what you don’t. BYD Seal U, MINI Cooper, Skoda Kodiaq, Kia EV3 and Tesla Model 3 Premium were all in the queue.
The written reviews carry scores, so you can sort quickly — Volvo EX60 at 9/10, Jaecoo 8 at 9/10, Jaecoo 7 at 8/10, Ford Explorer at 7/10. Mat Watson and a team of expert writers are behind them, with the stated aim of zero fluff, just solid advice.
There are odder, more practical touches too. Mat has loaded carry-on suitcases into 35 cars for a boot space leaderboard: the Kia PV5 took 18, the Honda Super N managed two. For used buyers there is a car history checker, and used stock is browsable by make, by type and by city, from Aberdeen to Sheffield.
Why running your plate is the sensible first move
By the end of the afternoon I had done two things that usually take two separate trips: put my current car in front of dealers, and built a shortlist of new, used and lease options with discounted offers attached.
The reason to start today rather than at the weekend is simple. Carwow UK calls itself the free, easy way to change your car online, and selling is described as fast, fair and without fees. The registration box replaces guesswork with a figure you can hold up against any forecourt offer you are given later.
Your car is worth whatever a dealer will pay for it, and the way the site works is to put it in front of thousands of hand-picked dealers at once. One box, one plate, and the rest of the decision gets a lot easier.
