Selling Privately

There are three ways to sell your car: privately to someone you know or through an advertisement, part exchange or through an auction site. I give you the inside info on preparing your car for sale, getting the best price and avoiding the undesirables on the door step.

Use the navigation on the left to find out what you need to know.

How to Prepare the Car For Sale

The public are suckers for clean-looking cars. So, whatever old rubbish the car may be, if it can be made to look good, someone will inevitably buy it.

Making a car look good is a matter of thoroughly cleaning it inside and out, thoroughly polishing it - paying particular attention to the windows, treating the plastic with a restorative, touching up or 'blocking in' as many paint chips as you reasonably can and blacking the tyres to make the whole show look new. An upholstery spray such as 'Apple Fresh' also goes down well. Whatever you do, don't spray the plastic around the dashboard with shiny glop. This looks and feels hideous and will make the public suspicious.

If you are selling the car privately from your doorstep, consider servicing it and putting it through a fresh MOT. It doesn't need to be a big service, but it will give buyers confidence and make then feel much better disposed towards you. A fresh MOT is worth many times the MOT fee, assuming the car dos not need expensive work to get it through.

A couple of years ago I came across a lady with a filthy Rover full of kids stuck by the roadside. The car was dead, I couldn't help, and the lads from the garage round the corner were called in. A few days later I asked one of them what had been wrong with the car. 'SPlugs and throttle valve completely choked up with muck. Hell of a state', he replied. 'I asked her when she last had it serviced and she told me 16,000 miles ago. I offered to service it for her but she said, no, we're selling it next week.'

This is the worst way to sell a car because all any trader will look at is the profit they can gain from cleaning it up and re-offering it. She'll have got about £2,000 less for it than she would have done had it been clean, freshly serviced and newly tested.

How to Prepare Your Advertisement

If you're using a photo ad in one of the many 'Trader' publications, don't let their bloke come round and take the photograph. Especially don't let him take his snap of the car parked next to the dustbins round the back of a block of flats.

These days, if you don't have a digital camera you can borrow one. Obviously it's well worth taking a bit of time over the photo if a good snap is going to sell your car faster and for a lot more money.

So take twenty. Photograph the car against a variety of backgrounds. Side-on, three-quarters, against a contrasting skyline; then pick the photo that both shows it off the best and is most likely to reproduce well on fairly grotty newsprint, as well as in full colour on a website.

Describe the car accurately and simply, using no superlatives. 'Nissan Primera 2.0SVE 5-door, 2004/04, 55,632 miles, full service history, met blue, air-conditioning, alloy wheels, good condition, £5,500' will go down a lot better with the general public than 'Beautiful Nissan Primera, two litre, top spec SVE model, 04 reg, 55k, FSH, stunning metallic blue, a/c, alloys, drives superb, first to see will buy £5,499'.

Vital these days is to include in the ad the words, 'No Canvassers'. I'll explain that later.

Where to Advertise

This depends on the car and the price range.

For cars under £3,000, it's always worth putting a postcard in the local newsagent's window. Local newspapers or freesheets usually have sections for this type of car. People who buy Loot, the London classified newspaper, expect cars advertised in it to be cheap. Auto Trader magazines also offer sections for cheap cars. And if the car is a bit specialist, Exchange & Mart is worth a stab.

Mid-range family cars seem to go best either from the bigger local newspapers (or groups of newspapers) or from a photo ad in an Auto Trader.

If you have something you think a dealer or an enthusiast might be interested in, Autocar is worth a try. If attempting to get a high price or an 'over' for a car the demand for which exceeds supply, then you'll do best with an ad in Exchange & Mart, The Sunday Times or The Daily Telegraph 'Motoring' which appears on Saturdays.