I have a 1986 300e with 30,000 original miles in diamond blue w/leather interior...runs great and garage kept. I am interested in selling it and I plan on asking $7500 for it. Is that a reasonable price to ask? A friend of mine who deals in foreign cars told me I could easily get $9000 for it, but I did not believe him. I live in Pittsburgh, PA by the way...if anyone is interested.
I checked with KBB.com or nadaguides.com for your value... and I am sorry to inform you that both those places said $3500 at the most... but I suspect their value system has been altered recently... because my car value went from $2200 to $825 in 6 months.
I would say $5000 is probably resonable... or whatever you paid from the previous owner as I remember you just got it.
Well I wish I could buy that car at 3500 bucks, cause I paid almost 4 K for my POS 190E (1988) last year with 150 000 miles on it...and it's cost me another 4 K just to keep it on the road....never again
Thanks for the post, I have had the car about six months. I love it, but I am starting to do alot of driving for work and need something a bit more pratical...plus I do not need two cars. As far as KBB I think they must have some sort of arrangement with the car dealers, because as soon as you say trade to them, they run to the computer and bring up the KBB value for your car. Like it is the gold standard for automobile values.
KBB *is* the gold standard for automobile values. There are some other national and local pricing guides available, but KBB is the most widely used national source. A used car is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. The dealerships and used car lots selling them have the best knowledge of that. They rely heavily on wholesale auctions for inventory. They base their bids on knowing they can sell the car for at retail and still making a profit, so the wholesale auction prices are a function of what the retail buyers are willing to pay. KBB and other used car wholesale pricing guides simply report on the current auction prices. There's nothing secret about it and it's not rocket science.
One thing to note is that just because KBB lists a particular wholesale value for your car, that may not necessarily be the trade-in value offered by a dealer. One reason is that if the dealer does not want to keep the car on his lot, he will incur some costs and fees to get it to the auction. Because of this, the trade-in offer may be below KBB value. Another factor is that the dealers know that the public has easy access to KBB values, so they will often offer a lower trade-in value, leaving room to negotiate in the overall deal. The best thing you can do when buying or selling a vehicle is to be armed with information.
Kbb is not the standard!!! At least not in the southeast. Kbb is pretty baseless. Dealers use black book for trades and purchases. Manheim for odd models. Nada tells us what banks and credit unions will loan.
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