to assist another board member (out of state) with an idea of what their crossfire was worth via carmax... i took my car to them for an idea of appraisal value (less than 5 miles away from my home).

i have to say i was quite impressed. considering new '04s on dealer lots can be had for around 19k or so...

my '04 car has 27,200 miles on it... in near perfect condition... they offered me $17,500. (cash offer... as they call it). a direct buy... no car purchase from them.

i thought this price was very fair.

and no i'm not getting rid of my car to carmax... just trying to help out another board member.

 

With the new tires and upgrades your car should sell for $22,500.00 IMHO. It's an Alabaster Coupe!
Of course without the clear side markers. Box those puppies up and send them over to Fritzauf.

 

(arm wrestles with Fritzauf for Andrew's clear side markers). <grunt grunt>

 

I just got off the Kelly Blue book site to look mine up there. $17K seems to be the number these days for an '04 coupe with average miles. I suppose that's not bad considering what the Cfs are going for now. I can't wait until the last one rolls off the assembly line in '07. Stop flooding the market please.

I was only looking because I was considering the '05 SRT6 that has been sitting on my dealers lot for the last year and a half. They are down to $32K for it. Not a bad deal. If I could get it for my car and $10k I might consider it. Looks like I am too far away for that.

 

Just checked the blue book for my area, (Long Island) an '04 Crossfire with 25,000 miles $23,575.

 

Know it - Don't put a lot of credence in Kelly Blue Book. When I was trading in my GT Cruiser last year I went to quite a few dealers, Kelly trade in report in my hand each time. My car was in excellent condition with really low mileage. Every trade in offer I got was way and I mean way below what the Kelly numbers were. I asked the dealers about this and they said they never (5 different Chrysler dealers) rate a car excellent condition. I think most dealers use another book, someone can correct me here but is it the NADA? And they are constantly dealing with wholesalers for your car. With the number of used cars available these days I think the dealer pretty much has you by the short hairs on a trade in, unless you are trading for something they want off their lot. I've still found the end of the month is the best time to buy.
I've also heard of another service being advertised, sorry I don't recall their name, that will come to you, and buy your car. The ad says they will beat Carmax and Kelly on your car.

Pat

 

When I was married, my ex-Uncle-in-law worked as a finance manager for a Chrysler dealership. I asked him once about trade ins, since it was his job to inspect them. He said he looks at them, drives around the block and then checks a book... it was Kelly, but it was called a Black Book or something. He said it's what all the dealers he knew of used.

All I know is the prices in it were much less than a typical Blue Book.

 

The book you are talking about is the Galves Book. Consistently low numbers written for the dealers exclusively. Hey Crispy those are retail numbers I am sure. Wholesale is what the dealer will give you.

No way any dealer is going to put $23.5K on this car. Unless you are buying a $75K car to replace.

 

dealers only pay what the car will bring at auction...they refer to auctions on the retail web sites for dealers only...i traded mine last feb. on a '04 corvette and got $17,800 dollars for a trade. that was the best offer i received anywhere in this area in fact i had to drive to atlanta to buy the vette...general motors messed up all trades when they had the employee give away last year...they devalued every vehicle out there...they flooded the used car industry which brings down prices...it will take a number of years to purge these cars out...my guess is the suv will be existent in 8 to 10 years...

 

the price i posted was not trade in value it was retail price, the trade in, in good condition with 25,000 miles is $14,460

 

Yes, that sounds about right. No one in their right mind would part with this car for 14K. 17K is do able but it is a large hit to take. Fact is, no car is an investment in it's first five years maybe not even in ten. How about all those idiots that paid top dollar for a crappy Mustang or worse yet all those that bought a four cylinder Solstice. Ouch!
Nothing stays hot forever. Have you seen Britney Spears lately?

 

thanks for the info andrew. i'm actually going to try to sell my car a few more weeks if it doesn't sale, i am going right down to carmax, and just trading it in. i'm getting myself a Z06 vette...getting sick of waiting to sale this damn thing.

 

The absolute number in the Northeast is Manheim auction, which no matter where you live there is one by you. They control 60% of the used car market world wide. The dealers offer you what the car would sell for at auction. That way they know if it won't sell on the retail side they can cash it there. Can't do that with a book. This week the average price based on many vehicles going through the auction; '04 coupe with 10K on the odo wholesale $19,000, same car with 20K on the odo, $17,276 and the same with 30K miles brought $15,474.

 

Like it or not, these are real numbers. No pie in the sky my car is special and should be worth more here. That's called sentimental value, and the dealer puts 0 value on that. We all know that these cars are worth far more, but the market sets the price, and the market has almost no interest in this car. Keep it and enjoy your exclusivity. I agree the Vette is a nice car, but around here, every old, fat, balding, 40 something plumber has one.

 

acrispy1 - what you just stated is the other confusing issue for some. Kelly uses 3 different rates, the trade in, retail and private party values for your car. Trade in will be the least amount, private party is what you could possibly buy it for from a want ad/private party and then the retail is from a dealer. How they come up with the private party number I don't know.

knowit - the book I'm talking about had initials, it was a small book. I've seen it many times as I had a buddy who was a used car dealer. The book listed every option possible for any given car, much more detailed than Kelly. Again I think it was NADA? Whatever I guess the bottom line is we ain't in collectors item status yet!

Pat

 

It is usually the loan value that you could get on the car if you went to the bank to finance it. Only applies to individual deals...not dealer type steals.

 

Guys STOP. Where do you think Kelley, Black book, NADA get there numbers from? They base it on the auto auction prices. Those are hard numbers. And as I stated its Manheim numbers. The worlds largest auction group. It all started in Manheim PA and has grown world wide. They look at last weeks numbers and last months and set the trend. To give you an idea, in the Manheim auction in Manheim (they have several PA locations too) they run the cars for all dealers to attend on every Friday. Every Friday around 10,000 cars go through. Oh by the way they hold auctions almost every day! Some days are GM dealers only some are VW etc. Every other week on Thursday they hold the exotic sale, Rolls, Bentley Ferrari, and that is typically 5,000 cars. Get the picture. These are the real numbers. I've been there many times.

 

Thanks upstate, makes sense, didn't see your original post. My point which I guess I didn't make is that Kelly is almost useless in trying to figure a trade in amount.

Pat

 

The "Black Book" is most every dealers bible when it comes to appraising a used car. A new book comes out every week, and is a compilation of several
"dealer auction" average prices for any given car in that area.
It's also regional, by that I mean, The prices a dealer has in their black book in Florida, will be different than one from the North East region.
When I had a used car lot here in the Akron area, and I purchased a vehicle at the auction for average Black Book value. I was almost guaranteed a profit by shipping it to Orlando Florida's dealer auction. Well that is, if I picked the right car that was currently popular down South.
Black Book had 4 pricing categories. Extra Clean, Clean, Average, and Rough. It also listed how much to add for most all popular options.

 

Not to beat a dead horse but that is what I said. Black book as others gets there prices from several auctions and regions (most of the auctions are Manheim). On the Manheim web site you can plug in the car and get a regional price or look at every auction sale price in the nation car by car. This is sorted by the day they ran. A book is a guide and even printed each week is not as accurate as the auction info that is as recent as 12 hours. Also if a Crossfire sold last week for 17K you are pretty safe at a little less than 17K trade in because you could run it to the auction and get that. Of course there are transportation fees auction selling fees too.