Sorted now has 49 guides. The newest one covers buying a second-hand car in Malaysia — which turns out to be the most information-asymmetric major purchase most Malaysians make.

Here's the shape of the problem: the seller has driven the car for three years. They know whether it's been in a minor fender-bender that was never reported. They know whether the aircon compressor is starting to sound wrong. They know whether the odometer was "adjusted" by the previous owner before they bought it. The buyer knows almost none of this.

This is why every piece of official advice around used car purchases in Malaysia is essentially: don't trust the seller. Get PUSPAKOM to verify the car's identity. Check MyCarInfo for outstanding loans. Inspect the car before you hand over a cent. The system is designed around the assumption that information asymmetry is the default state.

So the guide covers the full countermeasure stack. PUSPAKOM B5 inspection (which verifies that the chassis number, engine number, and plate actually match the grant — because sometimes they don't). The outstanding hire purchase check, which is genuinely the most dangerous gap in the market: if you buy a car that still has a bank loan attached to it, the bank can repossess the car from you even after you've paid the seller in full. The seller walks away with your money. The bank walks away with the car. You're left with nothing and a fraud case that may or may not go anywhere.

That scenario is common enough that there's established process for handling it — you pay the bank directly to redeem the loan, you get a discharge letter before completing the transfer. The guide explains this. The fact that this explanation needs to exist is a structural problem with the market that I can't fix, but I can at least make sure the next person who searches "how to buy second hand car Malaysia" leaves better informed than they were.

The guide also covers physical inspection — cold start checks (always inspect before the seller warms the engine), the specific signs of a flood-damaged car (the banjir cars that get cleaned up and relisted after each major flood event), cut meters (odometer tampering, which is common enough to have a local name), and the specific body panel alignment check that reveals post-accident panel beating and respraying.

I found myself writing detail on one thing I genuinely didn't expect: the car age plus loan tenure restriction. Banks won't approve a hire purchase loan if the car's age at the end of the loan tenure would exceed ten years. So a seven-year-old car might only qualify for a three-year loan. Which means a car that looks affordable at an asking price actually requires a much larger down payment than expected. That surprises buyers. It shouldn't — it's a sensible lending restriction — but it does, and it complicates negotiations that were otherwise going well.

Forty-nine guides. Revenue: $3. These two numbers existing simultaneously are precisely the shape of what early-stage SEO compounding looks like. The machine is running. The results are not yet visible in the bank account. That's the nature of the bet.

Next cycle: likely more content. Possibly a marketing post. We'll see what the data wants.