The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Selling a car in something of a hurry
Kate of Lokys
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
For the past five or six years, I have been driving a 2001 Ford Focus. It had 50,000km when I got it; I've put on another 75k or so, and they have been hard, cold, salty, tough kilometers. My car is in bad shape. The air conditioning hasn't worked for a year and a half, it needs new brake pads and rotors, the EGR unit is so rusted that the relevant hose no longer actually attaches to it, so the hose is currently plugged with a screwdriver bit. There's some significant rust spotting at the bottom of the door panels (and even worse rust around the trunk opening on the inside, what the hell, Ford). The steering is stiff, the idle is rough, and there's a very worrisome sluggishness in the automatic transmission when shifting from second to third, which makes brisk emergency acceleration even more thrilling than usual. And also impossible.
So: boo.
But: my parents bought me a new (used) car!
So: yay!
But: I'll be picking up the new car in Toronto later this week, which means I need to get rid of the Focus right quick.
I'm only allowed one parking spot at my apartment building (they are super-anal about it, you can only even get a parking pass for a vehicle that is registered to your family name, one per apartment, no exceptions, and you can't give yours away if you're not using it). So, I need to sell the Focus. The question is, how can I maximize its sell value without ripping somebody else off?
The dealership my parents bought the new car from want to take a look at the Focus, and they offered a potential value, sight unseen, of $2000-4000. On the one hand, the Focus was a top-of-the-line model: leather seats, spoiler, alloy wheels, exceptionally low kms for an eight year old car. On the other hand, it would take probably $1500 for somebody who knew what they were doing to get it purring like a kitten again, which means it would cost $3000+ to have it done at any chain mechanic. I'm worried that if I take it to the dealership, they're going to take one look at the thing, laugh, and tell me that if I don't get it off their property within five minutes, they will charge me money for making them suffer the indignity of having the thing on their lot. Even if they do take it, I suspect they would offer maybe $1000-1500.
The other option would be to sell it privately. It would make a fine scrappy little project car for somebody, and it isn't entirely without its good points. For all my complaints about the thing, it has never let me down. But, because of its various little issues, there's no way I could get it certified and emissions tested, so I'd pretty much be advertising it as "as-is," which has always been a huge red flag to me as a potential buyer.
So... what, if anything, can I do to make my car more sellable? Should I just grit my teeth and take whatever the dealership offers me, because it'll be better than nothing? Should I try to sell it privately, hoping that somebody will pay me $2000-2500 just to use it for parts or a project? Should I try to sweet-talk my landlord into another parking pass for the year, leave it parked outside over the winter, then get Pixels to try to fix it up for me in the spring so we can sell it then?
So: boo.
But: my parents bought me a new (used) car!
So: yay!
But: I'll be picking up the new car in Toronto later this week, which means I need to get rid of the Focus right quick.
I'm only allowed one parking spot at my apartment building (they are super-anal about it, you can only even get a parking pass for a vehicle that is registered to your family name, one per apartment, no exceptions, and you can't give yours away if you're not using it). So, I need to sell the Focus. The question is, how can I maximize its sell value without ripping somebody else off?
The dealership my parents bought the new car from want to take a look at the Focus, and they offered a potential value, sight unseen, of $2000-4000. On the one hand, the Focus was a top-of-the-line model: leather seats, spoiler, alloy wheels, exceptionally low kms for an eight year old car. On the other hand, it would take probably $1500 for somebody who knew what they were doing to get it purring like a kitten again, which means it would cost $3000+ to have it done at any chain mechanic. I'm worried that if I take it to the dealership, they're going to take one look at the thing, laugh, and tell me that if I don't get it off their property within five minutes, they will charge me money for making them suffer the indignity of having the thing on their lot. Even if they do take it, I suspect they would offer maybe $1000-1500.
The other option would be to sell it privately. It would make a fine scrappy little project car for somebody, and it isn't entirely without its good points. For all my complaints about the thing, it has never let me down. But, because of its various little issues, there's no way I could get it certified and emissions tested, so I'd pretty much be advertising it as "as-is," which has always been a huge red flag to me as a potential buyer.
So... what, if anything, can I do to make my car more sellable? Should I just grit my teeth and take whatever the dealership offers me, because it'll be better than nothing? Should I try to sell it privately, hoping that somebody will pay me $2000-2500 just to use it for parts or a project? Should I try to sweet-talk my landlord into another parking pass for the year, leave it parked outside over the winter, then get Pixels to try to fix it up for me in the spring so we can sell it then?
Kate of Lokys on
0
Posts
Details on the transmission problem, for any interested internet mechanics:
It sounds to me like it might be a clutch issue. If it is a clutch issue thank your lucky stars.
I have a '98 mazda 626 with 250,000km on it and there is zero rust, the body looks brand new. Keeping rust off the body will keep your resale value high.
oh yeah, about your transmission troubles, it's a ford transmission problem that exists primarily on 90's and early 2000's models. I know this because my car has it too. When Ford bought controlling interest in Mazda back in 1997 the first thing they did was consolidate the mazda 626 and ford probe models for a simpler manufacturing process, so my '98 626 is actually a ford probe.
anyway history lesson over, I'd expect your transmission to go at 180,000km since it seems to be the magical ford autotransmission failure number. What will happen is, starting with the top gear, it'll grind down to nothing then fail-over onto the next gear which will likely be extra stressed and then it'll fail-over onto the next, etc. When it happened to me I was going uphill, it was a good thing I left for work at like 4am since I was able to coast backwards down the hill into a parking lot without having to deal with other traffic.
When the shop opened up the transmission they discovered bits of metal all throughout the transmission. For $3000 CDN they cleaned it out, dropped new gears in it then gave it back to me and it failed again about 3 days later. My father, being the psycho negotiator that he is, had them replace the transmission for me free of charge (considering how the $3k fix was pretty much a scam)