How to sell an R

[dtheo]

Curious, if you had a GT350 or a GT350R model, how would you go about selling it? Car sites like Cargurus.com or Cars.com, Cars & Bids, Bring-a-Trailer, etc? What gets the best buyers with potential better sales price? Obviously a dealership is going to rape you right?

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[stanglife]

Plain and simple - you want to cut out the bull#hit. Autotrader. I had less BS requests there and more real shoppers and ultimately real buyers. It's old, yes - but it's not integrated so much with social media and there are fewer people there that feel the need to "be seen" while they probe you with stupid questions.

I've found that in life as a whole, the goal is to successfully filter out the dumb people, giving them zero of your time.

 

[passwords]

I don’t have the time right now, but I’ll try to make some time later tonight or tomorrow to give you my observations regarding the recent sale of my ZLE. Same basic concepts in selling a specialty car, but I took a slightly different route than Jeff.

 

[Jasonb543]

List it on marketplace and other forums, lower by 500$ per week until you find a buyer or “market clearing price”

don’t be surprised if it’s lower than what everyone tells you it’s worth, I just went through this with my foxbody.

turns out the only way to get a sale done in my area is at prices below what I’m willing to sell it for, so I took it off market and am keeping it. Maybe try next year

 

[young at heart]

Curious, if you had a GT350 or a GT350R model, how would you go about selling it? Car sites like Cargurus.com or Cars.com, Cars & Bids, Bring-a-Trailer, etc? What gets the best buyers with potential better sales price? Obviously a dealership is going to rape you right?

Dealers exist to make a profit. To do so they buy at wholesale and sell at retail. I’m not sure I’d call it rape. If you’re willing to do your own retailing you can pocket their markup.

 

[Inthehighdesert]

Always cracks me up. Where do people think there paychecks come from. It's simply called doing business.

Dealers exist to make a profit. To do so they buy at wholesale and sell at retail. I’m not sure I’d call it rape. If you’re willing to do your own retailing you can pocket their markup.

 

[_zOmbIE_]

Bring A Trailer would get my vote. The buyer pays the listing fee, they have a history of weeding out people who back out on winning bids, etc.

 

[WildHorse]

Easy. You sell it to me.

 

[passwords]

Your post on this topic is particularly timely for me. As I posted above, after years of being a potential buyer of cars, I found myself trying to sell an amazing performance car with broad appeal and extremely low production numbers, but a very small pool of potential buyers. I hadn’t really considered selling it before, but after seeing it sit unused over yet another winter, taking valuable space in my garage, and having another new car on its way, I decided it was time for that car to go. I hadn’t sold a car in around 20 years, so I had no idea where to even start.

The car was my 2019 Camaro ZL1 1LE M6, referred to as a ZLE to avoid the ridiculous alphabet soup. Like the R, the ZLE is a track-focused variant of a (relatively) less extreme car, in this case the ZL1. Also like the R, Chevy produced about 25,000 ZL1s, but only 4,000 ZLEs over a similar production period to the GT350/350R. I had always kept a general eye on what the value of that car was, so I had a good idea of what I could expect to get from it. But because I hadn’t previously considered selling it and had no recent real world experience selling a car, I started my research process.

First, because I was already buying a new car, I tried to trade it in. That was a total bust. The simple fact is that any car dealership that sells a major new car brand isn’t in a position to differentiate between the specialty track-focused variants (the exception may be foreign brands that are primarily track/performance focused, like Porsche). I was offered about $18k less than the true value of the car, and while the dealership manager I was dealing with insisted he “knew these cars” it was clear he knew ONLY that it was a ZL1, not a ZLE.

Next, I considered BAT, but as I waded through BAT, it became clear that venue has a certain “type” of viewer/ commenter/bidder, with a clear bias for certain cars and against others, not necessarily representative of the overall market place. While Rs tend to do fairly well on BAT, ZLEs do not. That’s why despite similar production numbers to Rs, you rarely see ZLEs on BAT. Still, I wouldn’t sell an R on BAT either.

Third, I looked through the free ad section of the Camaro6 forum to see what similar cars were listed for. Most of the posts on that forum were littered with shit-posts by non-buyers heckling the asking price and just generally dragging the for sale posts down. While you could potentially find a buyer in that venue, it’s just not the best place to start and it can turn toxic quickly.

Fourth, I tried the Carvana and Carmax route. Just like the dealership experience, those venues are likely effective for the ZL1 or GT350 seller, but they aren’t capable of making any meaningful differentiation in a ZLE or R. I got offers that were about $17k below true value from those venues.

I posted on this site asking for advice and several members here suggested Cars.com and Auto Trader. I looked into both, and was seriously considering taking Jeff’s advice to post on Auto Trader, but I had to detail the car first, find some spare time to take GOOD pictures, draft the ad narrative, etc. A real headache, but doable. And then I had an epiphany, look into specialty car brokers.

In the end, I found a specialty car broker that took the car, did all the prep work, listed it in several places including their own website, and sold it the day it listed (I didn’t know until a few days later). I paid a 5% commission which, in my mind, was more than reasonable considering the deadbeats, scammers, and tire kickers I otherwise would have had to deal with if I tried to sell it myself.

This post isn’t an endorsement of auto brokers, some (most) of them can be really bad. But for a car like a GT350R, the pool of actual buyers is very small. The way I see it, I paid 5% for access to the broker’s pool of buyers, i.e. people like me. Finding a broker that actually knows what an R is and what makes it special is worth the price if you don’t have the time to market and sell the car yourself.

In the end, I walked away with substantially more than I would have if I had just traded it in, but several thousand less than if I had sold it myself. But I also didn’t have to find temporary storage for the new vehicle, re-register the ZLE, continue insurance on it for several more months, and all the other expenses that add up.

I apologize for the looong post, but I think it’s relevant for folks in this area of the forum. In my eyes, the ZL1 is equivalent to a GT350 and the ZLE is equivalent to the R in the used car marketplace. Most of the marketplace is capable of understanding the GT350 as a rare and desirable performance car and can come close on value. But for an R, you really need to find an audience that both knows what the car is and can actually afford to buy it. That can be a lot of work.

 

[wingnutt]

IF i was personally selling (and I won’t, please bury me in this car) then I would BAT her, if nothing else to get the exposure

EDIT to keep Colonel Taylor from mucking it up…

 

[dtheo]

Dealers exist to make a profit. To do so they buy at wholesale and sell at retail. I’m not sure I’d call it rape. If you’re willing to do your own retailing you can pocket their markup.

Agreed, didn't mean to bash dealerships but we all know the business. The end game for any car sale is a higher sales price, thats what I meant by taking it to dealer, one doesn't achieve that goal.

 

[Crew4991]

I usually use Bring a Trailer for the specialty car purchases - your car needs to be top notch in order to fetch that premium price though. If it has miles, accidents, no maintenance records, ect. you will not want to use that to sell the car as the buyers can be picky... ask me how I know. Any of the other places will do the job. I recommend Autotrader or Cars.com for personal listings.

Do yourself a favor though and take many, high quality photos of your car with an interesting background. Exterior, interior, engine bay, trunk and underbody.

Do not be lazy and take photos of it in your driveway with your finger covering the damn license plate... If you have a special car, give it its time in the spotlight and showcase to potential buyers why they should buy it and pay the price for it. Show the fucker off! Its time to brag about the car.

Ultimately, I think the most important factor in this is listing it for a realistic price...

 

[sublime1996525]

I’m currently selling my GT350 and going through this process. I just threw it up on Marketplace and Utah’s version of Craigslist. I need to take some really good pics this weekend after it’s more thoroughly detailed and will try autotrader. I considered BaT but I’m at 40k miles so that’s out lol.

 

[Inthehighdesert]

You might check the thread up above. The OP is looking and seems to be genuine in his search.

I’m currently selling my GT350 and going through this process. I just threw it up on Marketplace and Utah’s version of Craigslist. I need to take some really good pics this weekend after it’s more thoroughly detailed and will try autotrader. I considered BaT but I’m at 40k miles so that’s out lol.

 

[StangersInTheNight]

Just FYI - CarGurus will no longer accept ads from private sellers, only dealers, beginning June 27.

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