End of shite?

[Andy F]

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/3287314464855540/

 

Just seen this, 306, tidy and rare spec but surely not worth £2500! Local to me too. Scary.

I will need to replace the Xantia this summer, and other than twice (a C5 and a C8 both years and years ago when they were quite new) I've never spend more than a grand. Looks like I'm going to have to dig a bit deeper or go electric with a lease.

[RoverFolkUs]

Just realized I should add to this as my Xsara Picasso was quite a score last year, only 30 something thousand miles, just shy of 9 months MOT, nothing up with it, other than a few exterior/interior defects.

£600. 

Was a case of right place right time, she said she was literally inundated with 200 or so messages. Mostly from stupid people. She gave the postcode and said come at your convenience, she's not around until the weekend (4 days away) 

It was down the road, literally a 5 minute drive so I thought sod it and went down there straight away, despite the slightly odd arrangements. 

By pure coincidence, her son turned up who was doing some maintenance at the house while she was away. An absolutely cracking bloke and we shook hands and did the deal there and then. He brought the car to me the next day after retrieving the V5. 

2 cases of right place right time, firstly seeing the advert pop up within the first ~ 15 minutes, and then happening to turn up when her son was there, otherwise god knows who she would have sold it to "at the weekend" 

I was probably there and the deal done within an hour of the advert going live. It actually took him longer to find the keys than it did for me to look the car over!

The deals do come and go, you just have to be extremely quick, and get down there as soon as possible 

[Barry Cade]

12 hours ago, DavidB said:

I'm looking at spending £1000 - £1500 for a car I would not have paid £250 for a few years ago, I think folk have just gone a bit mad with pricing - but pretty much anything sub £700 on facebook marketplace is gone very quickly.

Yeah, then appears a few hours later at a 100% markup 

Everybody is a poundshop Mike Brewer these days.

 

Just watched a mk2 Cav SRi sell for £9300. 

FFS.

Would somebody please tell my boss old stuff is worth a lot more?

[Mrcento]

On 1/29/2023 at 8:16 PM, sierraman said:

Every now and again something crops up at less than a grand but it’s few and far between and no good if your car has just shit itself and you need something pronto. I don’t even bother looking below £1500 these days, 99% of it is just scrap. 

I think it’s a number of factors over and above what’s mentioned already. Fewer can be arsed with selling cars privately now given the number of wasters offering ‘best price now’. Anything below a thousand quid I’d just bale tbh, at that price level generally I just don’t want to deal with them, too many problems like unreasonable expectations and dithering. 

This is pretty much spot on.

There's a lot of layers, inflation, shortages of supply etc, but getting a 'bargain' has become nigh on impossible in the modern world, largely because of the sheer ease of access everyone now has of finding out 'Wots it worth m8' and also ease of access for people/mouthbreathers to just fire off insulting offers from behind a computer screen.

Lot of sellers can't be arsed dealing with people any more. Prices have gone up to semi discourage people offering swaps for xboxes, but it's so easy for people, you can put up a car for £900, and have over 50 messages within the hour, and all of them will be chancers. Not worth it.

Side effect is also that ease of access means anything cheap is generally gone (in minutes up here, where the market has been desperate for 3-4 years now and there are plenty wannabe brewers who will be there in 20 minutes with a flatbed to take it no questions asked). So even when they are there...they aren't for long enough to even read the ad and get there to look.

Noticed a bit of a new trend lately too....and i think this is very reflective of where the market is at. Massive rise in people who will only swap for another car. Because absolutely FUCK being in the market right now, all well selling something and even if you get a decent price, how the fuck can you buy anything to replace at a similar certain price point?, If you don't already have the replacement bought and outside your house, you're fucked. Everything is overpriced tat and anything that isn't, you're not getting to it before the local Romanian with his 2 dodgy looking mates and their 'Mot expired in 2017' Transit recovery vehicles.

[Mrcento]

14 hours ago, maxxo said:

They’re out there still

just not easy to find

i bought this 37,000 and full proper service history back in august, even a brand new timing belt! It’s been completely trouble free too

i paid £750 for it, seemed suspiciously cheap

but I agree a few years ago this would have been £400

 

And up here, that would be £2500. Or about £3495 on a used car lot.

And it'd sell within a week.

I mean, i just watched a 1.8 406 sell for around that a month back.....

You got lucky. And i mean LUCKY. Brilliant purchase.

[Dobloseven]

=

17 hours ago, rob88h said:

The only place I seem to be able to find* bargains these days is "offline" - having a reputation for caring for end of life vehicles means family and friends (and eventually friends of friends) seem to prefer to offer something to me rather than even deal with WeBuyCarTakeback et al. The problem is that it's purely opportunity based and rarely anything is available when you need them!

This is how I've been picking stuff up for fun, last couple of years. Just ask people to let one know if and when they want to get rid. Not much good if you're desperate or want something specific though. If my budget for a daily car was £2k or less, think I'd be pretty miserable. 

[sierraman]

Difficult to make a generalisation here but here goes... under a couple of K it’s 90% of the time a distress purchase, the old car has chucked a big bill up or died completely so a new one beckons, the couple of grand is what most would be able to find/informally borrow without recourse to laying their testes on the anvil with finance. Of course you will get absolute pillocks that will be looking for as new as possible Audi for that money but generally they’ll probably go with common cars, Astra, Insignia, Focus, Fiesta, Micra, whatever. A 21 year old Citroen that most people in fairness won’t have heard of is unlikely to realise £3495 in reality, it might sit there for months because it’s not a known quantity and realistically at £3500 is pretty poor value as without some intensive maintenance and or expense it’s got a year or two left in it in most peoples hands.

[Vince70]

I’ve noticed this year prices seem to be on the up as most of my fleet came with a bit of ticket for under £500 previously apart from the E36 and Z3.

I did pick up a nice little pogweasel pink Mk1 Punto the other month for £450 with 49000 miles under its belt but had to travel 70 miles for it, 

It only had a short ticket though and I do have to put another on it now.

I think the price of scrap doesn’t help as everything is at least £280 minimum these days, as the other half just got that for a 05 Ka yesterday.

My other half’s son bought a tidy 05 206 a couple of weeks back for £1000 which had only done 36000,  but I bought the similar 206  four years ago for £300 with a years ticket as a buy it now off eBay.

[500tops]

[Rust Collector]

10 hours ago, RoverFolkUs said:

Just realized I should add to this as my Xsara Picasso was quite a score last year, only 30 something thousand miles, just shy of 9 months MOT, nothing up with it, other than a few exterior/interior defects.

£600. 

Was a case of right place right time, she said she was literally inundated with 200 or so messages. Mostly from stupid people. She gave the postcode and said come at your convenience, she's not around until the weekend (4 days away) 

It was down the road, literally a 5 minute drive so I thought sod it and went down there straight away, despite the slightly odd arrangements. 

By pure coincidence, her son turned up who was doing some maintenance at the house while she was away. An absolutely cracking bloke and we shook hands and did the deal there and then. He brought the car to me the next day after retrieving the V5. 

2 cases of right place right time, firstly seeing the advert pop up within the first ~ 15 minutes, and then happening to turn up when her son was there, otherwise god knows who she would have sold it to "at the weekend" 

I was probably there and the deal done within an hour of the advert going live. It actually took him longer to find the keys than it did for me to look the car over!

The deals do come and go, you just have to be extremely quick, and get down there as soon as possible 

That's somewhat similar to how I picked up my Shogun Sport, it was advertised on gumtree for £550 and I saw the ad by chance a few minutes after it was posted. He was only over in Brighton, about 45 minutes later I was at his house putting the cash in his hand. He mentioned there was 'a bit' of interest; his phone was still ringing whilst I was viewing the car 😅 That was back in 2019!

Internet market places have opened up the bargains to a larger market so I guess that plays a factor in obtaining shite motors. I've both won and lost due to this, but most of the cars I own I never would have had the chance to own if it wasn't for the internet so I guess it's a net positive for me.

[sierraman]

48 minutes ago, 500tops said:

As if! I’ve seen them go for mad money, I don’t understand why, they were ok when you could pick them up for £300 but when they’re Mondeo/Astra money... get real.

[colino]

I appreciate there is not overwhelming sympathy with the trade, but in my area now with the WBA/BCA/Cinch cabal and Arnold Clark swallowing up Central Car Auctions (with plans to expand massively down south) even the, "normal" supply has disappeared.  (I'm told BCA sell over half of all auctioned cars in Britain - that's a hell of a monopoly).  This contributes both to overheating in Gumtree/ebay/faceache where local traders are now fishing and to the demise of some well respected traders.  A friend who weathered the covid storm (no grants and no reduction in rent) had a plot for 40 cars.  He now has 6 trendy shopping trolleys prepped to the heavens and no older than 8 years old at retail +.  He's now less stressed but spends even more time each week locating stock that when he was turning over a car a day.

[junkyarddog]

No wonder @theshadow is gone quiet lately 😂

[Soundwave]

I'm looking at selling one of mine soon... I'm actually considering going old school and putting a sign in the window. That way the mouthbreathers actually have to physically see the car before they can enquire about it, so less chance of them coming up and pointing out everything that's wrong with it immediately (it's cosmetically very rough). I would be limiting my market reach though, and the chances of someone who's into tat walking past are slimmer than finding someone on the interwebz.

[Lankytim]

I think inflation, the high price of scrap steel and lack of confidence in the economy has increased the value of older motors. We're also dealing with new forces artificially inflating the price of old cars like "Car take back" style operations offering a pain free guaranteed sale, the internet enabling many times more potential buyers to see your shitter for sale  and catalytic converters being fitted to every car, adding £100- £500 to the potential value of of every clapped out clunker. 

Years back when the price of scrap was on the floor and there was much fewer outlets to advertise to a wide audience you'd see run of the mill 15 yr old crap for sale at the side of the road with a price and phone number scrawled on a piece of cardboard advertised for £250 or so or you'd get up early doors to buy the Friday ads paper to circle the usual suspects in the under £500 section. It was great fun and I bought loads of old heaps that way. 

[wuvvum]

1 hour ago, Lankytim said:

you'd get up early doors to buy the Friday ads paper to circle the usual suspects in the under £500 section. It was great fun and I bought loads of old heaps that way. 

It was always Wednesday morning for me - that's when the Diamond Freeads came out.  I'd invariably be at the local 24-hour BP garage by 6am to pick up my copy and get circling.

[Datsuncog]

I once made the error of listing a surplus Mk2 Fiesta in the Friday Ad for £50, as I just needed it gone and didn't want any hassle.

Big mistake.

The phone didn't stop ringing for about three weeks, at all hours of the day and night. In the end I unplugged it (landline).

And the first bunch of cretins to show up still messed around for about an hour and tried to chip me down.

Which is why my general policy, in common with others here, has now evolved to booting up CarTakeBack's website rather than Gumtree/ Facebook/ Autotrader/ small ads  whenever I've something on my driveway that doesn't want to car anymore...

[sierraman]

15 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

I once made the error of listing a surplus Mk2 Fiesta in the Friday Ad for £50, as I just needed it gone and didn't want any hassle.

Big mistake.

The phone didn't stop ringing for about three weeks, at all hours of the day and night. In the end I unplugged it (landline).

And the first bunch of cretins to show up still messed around for about an hour and tried to chip me down.

Which is why my general policy, in common with others here, has now evolved to booting up CarTakeBack's website rather than Gumtree/ Facebook/ Autotrader/ small ads  whenever I've something on my driveway that doesn't want to car anymore...

Extra shite giffer points for the ‘after 8 pints - are they Mondeo GLX wheeltrims?’

[robt100]

3 hours ago, Soundwave said:

I'm looking at selling one of mine soon... I'm actually considering going old school and putting a sign in the window. That way the mouthbreathers actually have to physically see the car before they can enquire about it, so less chance of them coming up and pointing out everything that's wrong with it immediately (it's cosmetically very rough). I would be limiting my market reach though, and the chances of someone who's into tat walking past are slimmer than finding someone on the interwebz.

Well if its the MX5, let me know where I should head to mouthbreathe physically near the car🤣

But I agree, it does seem to be getting harder to find good buys, especially the last 12 months.
Sold my Skoda Octavia at the start of 2020 for £700, since then have went through:
Mk2 MX5 £700 (Bought with 12months MOT and Sold for £700 with 2 weeks MOT)
Jaguar S-type V6 (Bought with 12months MOT for £1150 and a heater fault, fixed the fault and sold 4 months later for £1500)
So prices were creeping up as time went by just using the cars.

Then early-mid 2021 hit and it dried up a bit;
2006 Toyota Avensis D4D - Lasted 4 months then failed the MOT, scrap man took it away for £450.
Went to find a replacement with the scrap money plus a little more if needed and there was nothing! Everything was in the £1k plus bracket. Thankfully managed to find a bargain on Gumtree, 1998 E110 1.3 corolla 3dr. The ad was a day or two old, but the owner had recently had a potential buyer pull out, as I was down the road I told her I'd be there in 30mins, bought the car for a little under the price. Checked when I got home and if I scrapped it the same day I'd have made a profit! So I think the WBAC and scrap values are pretty much getting rid of the old cars, because society now sees cars as white goods, so if its old, just throw it away in the most convenient way possible and get another. Rather than taking time to write an Ad and sell somthing that they have been told nobody will want.


I do agree with what has been said about early-mid 00's being peak shed buying time. Got my first car that way, a 1986 Ford Capri, 65k on the clock.......£750.......It's now back up for sale again as I need money for a house move/renovations, breaks my heart to sell it, but at least the current market value means it doesn't hurt toooo much. Insurance has it down at £22k, so yeah, old cars have gone crazy prices. (On a side note, will put up a for sale ad for the Capri on here at some point, even though its not really the right category of car for the site, someone might be interested).

[St.Jude]

On 1/29/2023 at 2:53 PM, HMC said:

2008 - a 1988 216 vdp efi for £90. Went on a trip to Brighton in it for work and the mileage allowance paid for the fuel AND the car outright.

Them were the days.

In 2017 I bought a 2000 Subaru Legacy Saloon in blue for £35. £35 was for the bottle of whiskey I gave the guy for it. Albeit the guy was paying for the lockup and wanted it gone so I was saving him money having it collected etc.

The cam sensor it needed for it to run cost more than what I paid for it. Had intentions to do the cam belt but the clutch was so heavy it fucked my Achilles tendon twice. Wife gave me a then rare but now more frequent ultimatum of the Scooby or Paddy the Corolla. Chose Paddy, sold the Scooby.

I will never, ever, ever have a car like that for the money I paid. Hindsight is always 20/20 and I really should’ve just kept both cars and cancelled the wedding. But hey ho.

[grogee]

6 hours ago, colino said:

He now has 6 trendy shopping trolleys prepped to the heavens and no older than 8 years old at retail +

Forgive me, but that's a bit Carcoat Damphands slang. What exactly are you saying?

[HMC]

Getting my crystal ball out, mystic HMC here.

As pure electric vehicles progressively supersede ICE transport, what of the remaining ICE vehicles- will they get relatively less, or more expensive. This site began in 2006- 17 years from now what will their status be £££ wise in the old used car (or not classic, not nearly new- ie shite) world be?

apologies for thread drift but it’s sort of a longer term progression of the used market.

[chaseracer]

Early last year, the PCP on Domestic Management's DS3 came due.  Guaranteed value was £5100, WBAC valued it at £9900.  Good car, known quantity, so she bought it.  No-brainer.

Also, I spent about what it's theoretically worth getting the Blingo properly sorted - and I'm pleased I did.  I'd forgotten how much I like the old heap.

[Soundwave]

8 minutes ago, HMC said:

Getting my crystal ball out, mystic HMC here.

As pure electric vehicles progressively supersede ICE transport, what of the remaining ICE vehicles- will they get relatively less, or more expensive. This site began in 2006- 17 years from now what will their status be £££ wise in the old used car (or not classic, not nearly new- ie shite) world be?

apologies for thread drift but it’s sort of a longer term progression of the used market.

I reckon the cars themselves will become less expensive, but running them will become more expensive - the former partly due to the latter. With a significantly reduced demand, petrol and diesel fuel will cost more and be more difficult to obtain. Plus more cities switching to a ULEZ model will mean there'll be fewer places they can be driven without paying extra.

Probably talking a couple of decades before any of that though.

[500tops]

£2795 for a 16 year old Eye beefa 🤔

[Erebus]

7 hours ago, Soundwave said:

I'm looking at selling one of mine soon... I'm actually considering going old school and putting a sign in the window. That way the mouthbreathers actually have to physically see the car before they can enquire about it, so less chance of them coming up and pointing out everything that's wrong with it immediately (it's cosmetically very rough). I would be limiting my market reach though, and the chances of someone who's into tat walking past are slimmer than finding someone on the interwebz.

Don't forget to put it up in here as well for us mouth breathers! 😜

[Soundwave]

5 minutes ago, Erebus said:

Don't forget to put it up in here as well for us mouth breathers! 😜

Actually this is one of the few places online I'd consider advertising it. Ebay, facebook and scumtree are just filled to the brim with muppets and scammers (the aforementioned mouth breathers) and the owners clubs can be a mixed bag.

[Erebus]

1 minute ago, Soundwave said:

Actually this is one of the few places online I'd consider advertising it. Ebay, facebook and scumtree are just filled to the brim with muppets and scammers (the aforementioned mouth breathers) and the owners clubs can be a mixed bag.

Good to hear!  What is it out interest?

[Shedking]

In April 2019 I paid £475 for a Peugeot 206 with 46,000 on the clock. Had nearly 4 years out of it before it snapped it's timing belt on Christmas eve. 

Looking on Autotrader there was nothing under 2 grand that I wanted to own and made for very depressing reading. I was about to give up and spend a wad of money on something nicer when a client rang me.  He heard about the Peugeot, he had just bought a 2020 C Class and didn't have space on his drive for all his cars. He desperately wanted rid of his old E Class to free up room.

Firstly I didn't want a Mercedes and secondly I didn't want a diesel with lunar mileage on it but I needed a car before returning to work after the New Year.  After driving it (he'd serviced it religiously for 10 years) and having fitted a brand new turbo and diesel pump in the last 12 months, had it remapped also it went like stink, was as smooth as silk and so comfortable.  So for well under a grand I was back on the road and looking down the bonnet at a 3 pointed star.

I must say that I love driving the thing, if it does implode it was cheap enough for me not to be too out of pocket because trying to find anything resembling reasonable for under the 2 grand mark was a soul destroying experience. 

[5speedracer]

Watching Car Wizard on YT the other night looking at a Dodge something estate car, basically a Chrysler 300C estate. About 15 years old with something like 260k miles on it. He had it on to show how shonkily it had been repaired after a crash but went on to say if it was in good condition it would be worth $10-15,000!!

Cars apparently hold value in the US of A.