Selling my car.

[Slarti]

I have now been advised that I am no longer able to drive, for medical reasons and so will have to sell my car. Mrs S doesn't want at she'd rather have have her smaller car.

This means that I am going to be selling a car for over 40 years, having been trading in the mean time.

So a couple of questions.

1) Where is the best place to look and see a current price? The car is 18 years old with 63k miles on it, if that makes any difference, and mostly looks OK.
2) Where to sell? I don't want to do a personal sale as there are too too many medical things causing problems for me to bother.
3) There are a couple of chips on the bonnet, plus a scuff on the rear left bumper. Is it worth the cost of getting them done before looking at selling?

Anything that I haven't thought of?

Cheers
Slarti

[redsturgeon]

I am sorry to hear the news and hope that there are no other negative impacts on your life as a result of your health.

Wrt the car. At that age I'd suggest looking at Autotrader to see if a similar car is for sale, also perhaps Gumtree or Ebay may have similar cars to give you a guide

You could look a webuyanycar.com and they will give you a price with no hassle.

The price will be impacted by chips etc but it may not be worth the cost of repair to fix them.

All the best

John

[bungeejumper]

Let's see. Local press, too much work. Local dealer will offer you a pittance unless it's a proper vintage scarcity. (Although my local indie used to run a few respectable old'uns as courtesy cars.)

Ebay would be a final way of discovering price, but I have no experience, and I'd find the prospect daunting anyway.....

Maybe post it here? No immediate need to publicly name a price here, I'd have thought - but there might well be somebody on the lookout, and if it's been good enough for a trusted poster like you, perhaps somebody would follow up via PM? As a group it doesn't strike me that we're particularly fixated on bodywork perfection. Not that a few minor marks would affect the value of an 18 year old "mainstream" car anyway

So sorry to hear about your genuine reason for sale. I can imagine that these must be worrying times for you. Best of luck with the whole situation.

BJ

[sg31]

Sorry to hear about your health problems. I hope things work out ok for you.

[bungeejumper]

Simplest solution of all, of course, would be to put your kids in charge of the sale. (If kids there be....?) If they get the price wrong, you probably won't hold it against them for too long?

Ob story: I remember selling my old dad's Rover, about 18 years ago, when he had to stop driving. 14 years old, low mileage, a few scuffs. (The car, I mean, not my dad. ) I looked up the Autotrader prices, added a few hundred quid for luck, put it in the paper at £1400, and prepared to get beaten down.

Straight away, I got a response from a middle-aged bloke who turned out to be an ex-motorcycle racer. He wanted it for his daughter. We went out for a test drive, and after a while he asked me whether I'd mind if he put his foot down for a couple of miles? Fair enough, I said, but no speeding please.

I don't think the car had ever been given the beans before, and we were both a bit surprised at how it went. After we got back to the house, we opened the bonnet and there was water absolutely pissing out of two hoses that were presumably well past their prime. Whoops.....

"Excellent!" he said. "Thirteen hundred?" "Done," I replied. If only it was always that easy.

BJ

[Slarti]

One important misprint in my initiation posting, the car is 8 years old, not 18!


It is an Avensis auto, which is what makes me wonder if it is worth getting someone like ChipsAway to maximise to value.

https://www.webuyanycar.com/ are offering £4+ for first class condition, which given that I only paid £12,000 when I bought it at a year old doesn't sound too bad. Does it?

Slarti

[DrFfybes]

One important misprint in my initiation posting, the car is 8 years old, not 18!


It is an Avensis auto, which is what makes me wonder if it is worth getting someone like ChipsAway to maximise to value.

https://www.webuyanycar.com/ are offering £4+ for first class condition, which given that I only paid £12,000 when I bought it at a year old doesn't sound too bad. Does it?

Slarti

10 years makes a difference I wouldn't bother getting the blemishes touched up - you won't get it back in the sale price.

For a price guide I would look at Autotrader.
This one
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified ... 0143291298
is 50% more money and thick end of double the mileage.

ISTR you saying it was the 1.8 petrol and was it an estate? The 1.8 Petrols are supposed to be pretty good on fuel too - 40+ mpg on a run which is as good as I got from a V70 Auto.
If it is an estate then if you wrote "Volvo" on the back in crayon I suspect someone on here might be interested

Paul

[bungeejumper]

ISTR you saying it was the 1.8 petrol and was it an estate? The 1.8 Petrols are supposed to be pretty good on fuel too - 40+ mpg on a run which is as good as I got from a V70 Auto.

Indeed they are - they're the basis of the Toyota hybrids too. You can probably get more mpg than that if you search around among other brands, but you're buying Tried And Tested here. This engine was originally developed to power Noah's Ark.

Couldn't fault Toyota's reliability, as you know yourself. My Auris (5 years old, 65,000 miles) hasn't put a foot wrong, not even once. Boooooooring…….. And just well put together.

If it is an estate then if you wrote "Volvo" on the back in crayon I suspect someone on here might be interested

BJ

[AF62]

The two options I would suggest are webuyanycar and eBay, but in your case I would go with webuyanycar.

I have sold several cars on eBay, and you can extract a better price, but there is the hassle of selling, dealing with buyers (and tyre kickers), taking payment, and the potential for buyer's remorse and them coming back to you later.

webuyanycar is straightforward - they quote a price, if you accept it they send someone to inspect and collect it. They invariably find a few items where they will knock a bit off the price they quoted. Car goes and money arrives. End of.

Although looking at Autotrader might give you a sense of what others are selling for - so what? What are you going to do with that information if you don't want to sell the car privately.

[AsleepInYorkshire]

I have now been advised that I am no longer able to drive, for medical reasons and so will have to sell my car. Mrs S doesn't want at she'd rather have have her smaller car.

This means that I am going to be selling a car for over 40 years, having been trading in the mean time.

So a couple of questions.

1) Where is the best place to look and see a current price? The car is 18 years old with 63k miles on it, if that makes any difference, and mostly looks OK.
2) Where to sell? I don't want to do a personal sale as there are too too many medical things causing problems for me to bother.
3) There are a couple of chips on the bonnet, plus a scuff on the rear left bumper. Is it worth the cost of getting them done before looking at selling?

Anything that I haven't thought of?

Cheers
Slarti

Autotrader.co.uk

Search for cars of your make, model, age & mileage. There's plenty of filters. Then knock a bit off to sell it quick and get on with your life and buy Mrs S a Satnav as she's going to need to take you out to the seaside

Good luck, thinking of you

AiY

[Howard]

I agree with those who suggest webuyanycar.com. In the last four years I have sold a car through them and another through Autotrader. I found webuyanycar incredibly easy to deal with. The money was in my bank account within a day.

For the second car, it took only fifteen minutes after posting the Autotrader ad for the eventual buyer to contact me and he offered me more than 97% of my asking price. Whilst this was a fraction more than the price I had been offered by webuyanycar in the end it would have been less of a hassle and much quicker to use them.

very best wishes for a quick sale whichever route you use.

Howard

[gryffron]

Another option...

All webuyanycar do is send it to auction. Taking it direct to the local car auction means fewer middlemen than webuyanycar. So you should get a higher price. Though of course, the price isn't guaranteed, and you have to wait a few days. Many auction places will also collect the car from your home (for a fee) if you want even less hassle. IMO this is well worthy of consideration, especially for a car worth £4k+.

Clearly you'll get more money selling it privately, but that involves all the hassle of dealing with buyers, haggling, payment methods etc.

Good luck whatever you decide.

Gryff

[Howard]

Another option...

All webuyanycar do is send it to auction. Taking it direct to the local car auction means fewer middlemen than webuyanycar. So you should get a higher price. Though of course, the price isn't guaranteed, and you have to wait a few days. Many auction places will also collect the car from your home (for a fee) if you want even less hassle. IMO this is well worthy of consideration, especially for a car worth £4k+.

Clearly you'll get more money selling it privately, but that involves all the hassle of dealing with buyers, haggling, payment methods etc.

Good luck whatever you decide.

Gryff

Webuyanycar is a brand name of British Car Auctions so sellers are dealing direct with an auction house. Are you certain that you have received a better deal by going to the significant effort required to take a car to an auction? Slarti is not well and can't drive so he'd need to be sure that this effort would give him a much better price.

Similarly, in my experience he may not get a better price from selling privately. For someone who is not well, dealing with advertising and buyers who will want test drives and will certainly haggle, won't this be a stressful experience?

regards

Howard

[gryffron]

Webuyanycar involves staff sat in an office, and them taking the additional risk of the car reaching a lower price. Are you telling me they do this out of the kindness of their hearts? I think not.

And my local car auction will collect from your house, which afaik webuyanycar do not. So this is surely the very least effort option.

Anyway, i don't think there's anything wrong with webuyanycar. I was merely offering it as another option.

Gryff

[JessUK98]

If it is an estate then if you wrote "Volvo" on the back in crayon I suspect someone on here might be interested

Paul

That might have worked, but Slarti has said it's an auto and I'm not a fan of them!

PS sorry to hear your news Slarti.