I'm No Car Salesman

We got my daughter off to college on the other coast so we found ourselves with three cars and two people. I put an ad in Craig’s List for our 1989 Acura, kept the price low because of all the work it needed, and discovered that I had 25 calls and 10 e-mails the next morning. I guess not many people sell working vehicles for six hundred dollars.

Anyway, I got all these calls from people who didn’t have working vehicles who wanted to see the vehicle immediately. One of the odd things is that you can tell someone that you’ve got 10 people who want to see the car and they’ll ask you “What’s the least you’ll take for it?” It’s especially weird when you’ve got it at one of those I just want to sell the vehicle and move on prices. Who knew that so many people want a twenty year old car? It might be yet another sign of the recession, many years ago I had a horrible time selling a Toyota Van at an almost as good price.

Ultimately, I got a call from someone local who seemed to know something about fixing them. My wife tells me that I shouldn’t care about these things, but I had this fear of passing the vehicle on to someone who didn’t know how much work it might need (the front brakes were shot) or who was on such a tight budget that he or she might run the risk and get in a serious accident. We’ve had one family member who had a serious accident in a used vehicle, so I’m apparently terrified of bad “Carma”.

Over the phone, the guy told me that he had worked on cars as a teenager with his dad. They had once bought three junked Datsun 240Z’s and turned it into one good working vehicle. He drove up with his girlfriend in a newish SUV and both were a bit more clean cut than I expected. It didn’t seem like someone who’d just had his car die. In the meantime, I had all these people calling from two hours away who were trying to figure out how to take a bus to where I live so they could see the vehicle or how they needed a car to get to work. It turned out that he was buying the car for his brother.

He hands me an envelope filled with cash and the whole transaction took about forty minutes. He didn’t even test drive the thing.

Maybe I did give someone too good a deal and I could have squeezed several hundred more dollars out of the car. I guess I’m not a business guy for a reason. On the phone, I started worrying about these people trying to arrange for someone to drive them two hours to my place and would happily volunteer all the problems with the vehicle (brakes, sensor in the starter system, alarm, the rip in the upholstery, the passenger door wasn’t original, etc.) In the meantime, I have this fantasy about passing this inanimate object on to a good home where it will be cared for and not abused. I may have actually sold it to some younger brother with multiple wrecks, etc. but the older brother seemed nice enough.

My mom, who had actually given us the car, was totally indifferent about the fact that we moved her old Acura on. My mother did drive it for 16 years. It was also the vehicle our youngest daughter learned to drive on. Less than six weeks ago, I even had my adventure at Kragen Auto Parts when I had to replace the battery so I wouldn’t have to jump start the car every morning when I drove to work for the last three weeks I planned to use it.

It served us well, but I can’t quite say that it was a member of the family. I’m pretty sure that I won’t be waking up at night a few months down the line asking “Why did we ever sell it?” Maybe, I’ll be saying “Why the heck did I sell it that cheap?”

Years ago, I had an chemistry teacher who did show me how to analyze the real cost of a car. There was, in fact, this magic point when the amount of money you had to put into maintenance exceeded the value of the vehicle. He also argued that there were many situations where you’re much better off just giving a vehicle away than dealing with the cost of keeping it running (think insurance, storage, repairs, etc.) Anyway, the price you pay or sell at is really just a minor part of the cost or value of the vehicle.

That said, I took the 2002 Honda that I reclaimed from my now at college daughter in for a tuneup, etc. this morning. You guessed it. The total bill will be slightly higher than what I sold the Acura for the day before. I wish my town had a decent bus or subway system.
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