The Inspection Guidelines were developed by the ECG Quality Working Group in 2008. Since then it was slightly updated in 2012 and 2016. The document overwent a thorough 10-month long revision process in 2020-21 after which version 4 was published in September 2021. A slight change was made in June 2025 and led to the publication of version 4.1.
The main purpose of the ECG Visual Inspection Guidelines is to be a support document to conduct a visual vehicle inspection and to identify and report on vehicle exceptions (which can be transport damages, warranty defects and PDI exceptions). This way the new document provides a consistent approach for the inspection of vehicles throughout the supply chain.
The Guidelines include three Vehicle Exception Reports (for passenger vehicle, pick-up truck and panel van) in Annex 2 in case such a document is not available. Annex 1 contains a handful of useful images which will help the damage classification process.