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According to Wikipedia where information is made available for all under the GNU General Public License, A lemon is a defective car that, when purchased new or used, is found by the purchaser to have numerous or severe defects not readily apparent before the purchase. Any vehicle with these issues can be termed a 'lemon,' and, by extension, any product which has major flaws that render it unfit for its purpose can be described as a 'lemon.' 

I’m not going to focus much on new cars for this article since I’m more concerned on the rising number of used car buyers that eventually being scammed into buying lemons. The way they scam unsuspecting buyers are simply ingenious. They would normally does that on identical cars that have been involved in either bad frontal or rear accidents. I’m sure you realized that most car accidents only affect one side in any ordinary frontal or rear crashes and leaving the other one mostly intact. Instead of decommissioning such cars to the junk yards, they would bring them secretly into their workshops for marriage. They would accurately cut each car separating the crushed zone from the good one and then weld them together again to create a brand new car that looks very much accident free! Their work of cutting, welding, prepping and spraying is so convincing that most of the time is not easy to be detected by people like us. It is simply a deception and their work severely compromises the original structural integrity, safety, driveability, road handling and braking safety standards of the car! It is a definite death trap and we should be more careful and it does help if you could detect and identify such lemon cars on your own in the first place.

A talk with my mechanic friends came up with the following tips to identify lemon cars:

• Cut and shut cars are usually joined and welded together at the top of the rear windscreen and right along the C-pillars. You can see this clearly if you could remove the upholstery.
• You need very sharp eyes to do this. If you are sharp enough, you might be able to detect any mismatched or uneven car panels or the distinct difference in paint shades between them.
• You need very sharp eyes to do this. If you are sharp enough, you might be able to detect any mismatched or uneven car panels or the distinct difference in paint shades between them.
• Be on the lookout for any spillage of window seals or over spraying.
• Check out the interior trim. If you see mismatched trimmings, it is not good sign.

The best thing that one can do is to bring their used cars to the nearest Vehicle Inspection Authority centre and let the experts determine the status for you. Do the same thing as well of you are planning on buying a used car in the future. If the used car dealer is giving you a lot of excuses for not letting you have the car go for inspections, you should know that something is dead wrong with the deal. Luckily for those in US, you can now practically find out the history of any car online via CARFAX. You may use the information available to protect you from these irresponsible used car dealers as well.