KS Cars API: Read Korean Salvage Vehicle Records in Detail

KS Cars and salvage vehicles

KS Cars lists salvage vehicles: cars with damage, offered for repair, rebuild or parts. In KoreaCarsAPI it is a marketplace source, so its records use the common format and come back with is_auction=false unless a listing says otherwise.

KoreaCarsAPI is an independent data service and is not affiliated with KS Cars.

Who reads salvage records closely

Every buyer of salvage cars works from the record and the photos.

• Rebuilders who need to estimate repair work before they commit to a car.
• Parts sellers who look for specific engines, gearboxes or body parts.
• Exporters who handle salvage alongside clean stock and want both in one system.
• Developers building a damage-aware search for salvage buyers.

Reading one record, field by field

Start with the vehicle part: year, brand, model, generation, trim, engine volume, fuel, transmission, body type and colour. For a parts buyer, engine volume, fuel and transmission often matter more than anything else.

Then the listing: condition and damage describe the state of the car as KS Cars presents it, and the photos show it. The odometer, price with currency and dates complete the picture.

Photos deserve the most time of any field on a salvage record. They show what the damage field can only summarise: which panels are affected and how the interior looks. The full set comes back as original links, so a rebuilder can study the source images rather than thumbnails.

If a public inspection exists, inspections[] adds checked_items with part, damage type, severity and location on a body map, plus diagnostic error codes. If a public history report exists, vehicle_history_reports[] adds total_loss_count, flood_total_loss_count, flood_partial_loss_count, theft_count and the claim counts and costs, with a dated timeline of repairs.

Fetching a single car

Once you have a car_id from a search or an export, GET /cars/{car_id} returns the full record with all of its listings, inspections and history reports. This is the call to use when a buyer asks about one specific car.

Store the car_id with any quote you give, together with the date. If the buyer comes back later, a fresh call shows whether anything changed: a new entry in the price history, an updated damage field, or a last_seen_at that has stopped moving because the car is gone.

# Full record for one car: vehicle, listings[], inspections[],
# vehicle_history_reports[] (filled where the source publishes them)
curl --get https://api.auctionsapi.com/cars/CAR_ID \
  -d api_key=$API_KEY

What a missing report means

This point matters more for salvage than anywhere else. The API returns only public reports that the source publishes. If a KS Cars car has no history report, that means no public report was available, not that the car has no history. Show it as unknown in your tools, never as zero claims or zero losses.

The same applies to empty fields. Which fields are filled depends on the source and the listing, so an empty damage field is not a clean bill of health.

KS Cars with RB Auto Trade and the domestic market

KS Cars and RB Auto Trade both offer salvage vehicles from Korea. Using the same damages[] filter on GET /search, with domains[] repeated for both sources, gives a broader choice of damaged stock in one query.

To price a rebuild, compare with the same model on Encar or KB ChaChaCha, where cars are listed in normal condition. The gap between a clean asking price and a salvage price is the budget for repair, transport and margin.

Want to see how KS Cars records look for the models you handle? Ask for a demo key on Telegram or WhatsApp.

Questions