As some of you may recall, my wife’s 9 year old Ford C-Max hit what should have been an easily fixable issue with a failed ABS unit- instead the necessary part was on infinite back order and a used unit proved not to work with our local indy who gave us a discount on the attempt. But the real deciding factor on my wife getting a new car was the topic ever arising in the first place. Once the words were uttered she never really budged from the idea. The only thing that remotely shook her decision was that she has had her hopes set on an ID Buzz but as I pointed out to her; us buying in the first 1-2 years is a serious long shot and it doesn’t exist in the USA.
I posted about our car shopping and despite all your suggestions, the RAV4 hybrid was the winner- it’s known reliability, gas mileage, and space are really hard to argue with for the price. With a RAV4 hybrid on order, the question of what to do about her C-Max accelerated. The Toyota sales person said any car that isn’t drivable is automatically deducted pretty substantially, and told us if caravana or car max would give us decent money to go that route. A quick estimated purchase price at Carmax came back at $6,800(not ideal but acceptable given the work needed) but my wife went through the process and came up with $8,300. Who knows what she checked different than me but obviously we made an appointment with her estimate. We were prepared for them to negotiate down to near 6,800 in person.
Bare in mind; the work once it can be done on the car will cost $1,600. It also had some very light rust along the front quarter panel behind the front wheel at the bottom on one side.
But it was otherwise in good shape. The best comp(but not with broken brakes) I could find had the same miles and was for sale for $11,200.
Carmax looked the car over, test drove it, took a few pictures of the rust. And within 75 minutes we had a check for $8,300. So between some rust remediation, and the ABS unit, those are some thin margins.
Anyways, if you have a car to offload, CarMax is a decent consideration. They paid us about what we really could have hoped to get for the car. Now everyday we pray to get our RAV4 allotment. 2 weeks in and no word yet.
The best part of my wife springing for a new car—- I feel like she’ll be open to me asking to do the same in a year or two. Do I want a Corolla GR? Yes, yes I do.