Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests Trade in value of SVT????

I'm about to go pick up my SRT-4 and I was going to trade my car in, well let's just say their offer for my car was less than satisfactory. I thought I was open to just about any price they would throw at me but it was ridiculous! My SVT is in great condition although it does have 135,000 miles on it. You can see my mods in my sig. Disregard the pulley part, I took that off after I read the horror stories. So what should I expect???

yeah, im sure trade in value was awful, especially with the high mileage. resale value sucks for these cars. id say you could get about $6000 for it.

Seriously, I'd say that they offer you $3000 or so. You have to understand that they are a car dealership and they will not offer you sh!t for your current car, no matter what it is.

I once had an offer for $800 for my 90 300zx, trying to trade for a new 98 Mitsu Eclipse GS-T. I found a dealership across town that had a 97 GS-T with 10k on it for $3000 less. They gave me $10,000 for the 300zx. It's just all in the numbers at the bottom line.

If they were asking say $5000 over sticker, you can bet that they would give you more money for your SVT...

You will never get a good amount of money from a dealer, they can care less what mods are on it. Your best bet would be to sell it privately.

OK good I was waiting for a few responses until I told what they offered me. Get this one dealer was selling the car for $2000 over sticker and offered $2800 for my car. Another oh so generous dealer offered me the car at sticker and a whopping $1500 for my trade!

I just sold a 92 mercury Topaz with 46k miles on it, very low milage. They gave me $1500 for it with broken motor mounts and a broke harmonic balancer. The thing is they jacked up the price on the other side. I got a 99 contour SE with just under 37k miles for $12,000. I know I got riped on that price, but they gave me a little more for the Topaz, so they seem to balance out. Still looking back(two weeks ago) I should have bought an SVT from a private dealer for 8k or so and could have kept the Topaz, jeezz.

i got 1200 or so for my 95 jetta vr6....nothing worked on the car. none of the power options, one of the doors wouldnt open, the alignment was bad, the engine was terrible, it had 4 diff tires on it, it was bad

Is it too late to take that deal back? I bought my 99 (albeit a Zetec) in 2000 with 19K miles for far less that $12,000.

In early 2002, Carmax offered me $3800 for my 98 CSVT with about 51k miles at the time. It's probably because I told them I wasn't going to be buying one of their cars. I also came to find out that Carmax offers you wholesale value for any car you bring in.

Many dealers I've dealt with wouldn't pay over $100 for a car with over 100,000 miles on it. The dealer has to do something with your car after you trade it in, having over 100,000 miles and a manual transmission is a huge turn-off to the average sedan buyer, in the dealer's eyes.

About paying sticker price-- why would anyone do that? There's such a huge mark up on cars MSRP already, why pay over that? I refuse to pay more than 5% over invoice price. There's plenty of profit figured into invoice price for the dealer. I understand if a car JUST came out and you really like it, but wait a few months and get it for invoice price. I've owned 12 cars in 10 years of driving, and only got mildly burned on the Contour due to its atrocious resale value.

I'd say your best bet is to sell it privately. Dealers often look at mods as taking away from the car's value. Private buyers might look for modded cars.

Personaly I don't think you'll be able to sell it privately at the price your offering in the classifieds and I wouldn't even consider a dealer trade in. Even though you don't want to, you best bet will be to part out the car and then sell it close to stock. Our resale value sucks so bad. Oh well, maybe you should just keep both of the cars and drive which ever one fits you mood that particular day .