My Dad generally had no trouble selling cars on the relatively few occasions he put a car up for sale. They were always extremely well cared for and running like new (or better, twas the time of carburetors) when they went home with some lucky buyer, and I don’t think any of the cars took longer than a week to sell, even in the pre-internet days of classified ads and The Yankee Swapper (shout-out to my New England geezers).
There was one car, however, that just wouldn’t go away: a 1976 AMC Pacer, two-tone red over white, though I may be wrong about the year. Dad aquired one as the latest family mover sometime in 1980 or so, as I recall, and my sister and I considered it to be quite the weird novelty. The Pacer was already kind of a joke by then, but we grudgingly agreed it was a nice car to be in, and man, you could really see out of it well.
Unfortunately, it just never ran right, at least not right enough for my Dad. It would occasionally hesitate (if not fully fall on its face) when asked to accelerate more than gently, and Dad just couldn’t get it sorted – and this was a guy who rebuilt an entire MG Midget in the garage and got it to run as reliably as our Toyota Corolla. After a new carburetor and many other solution-chases, he threw in the towel and put the Pacer up for sale. It didn’t budge for a good month, an eternity by Dad standards, even at the low price he was asking. It didn’t help that Dad was honest to a fault, and let any prospects know the car had an issue, but I’m sure the price reflected that. One day, it was finally gone, to whom I don’t know. A week later, Dad came home with an A60 Celica. Now that was a car.
Stephen Walter Gossin, seller of 150+ used cars that he’s resurrected, has a tale of his own about a hard-to-sell machine. If a quick sale earns an “A,” this one is very aptly graded Z:
That 350Z (auto, convertible) that I sold about 2 months ago took almost 7 months for someone to purchase it. This seemingly aligns with the troubles that Nissan is having moving the new Z as well (only ~100avg sold per US State; 5K total units in 2025). I replaced the transmission, recovered the seats, took it to a paint shop and fixed dents and 20yr old paint issues, put a new top on it, did the valve covers, a new starter, new key fobs and still very much struggled to sell it for under book value. 2-seat cars have a very small buying audience.
Your turn: What Car Could You Just Not Get Rid Of?
Top graphic image: stock.adobe.com
I was thinking that it would be hard for me to sell my 2000 VW Golf TDI GLS a couple years ago, when I decided to finally get rid of it after owning it for 23 years. Even though it had low miles (80Ksomething IIRC) and was in pretty nice shape overall for the most part, I assumed dieselgate would hurt despite the fact that my A4 car predated that fiasco by almost a decade and wasn’t involved in those shenanigans at all.
To my pleasant suprise, lots of people wanted to buy it. I had already agreed to sell it to a guy from eastern Europe (who didn’t speak much English, but brought a buddy as a translator) for $400 below my $3Ksomething asking price so I kept my word and let him have it for that, despite the fact that not one but two other guys emphatically offered to pay my asking price and come get it that same Saturday.
I had that car for longer than any other single car I’ve owned (or am likely to own, now that I’m well into middle age) and while I liked it a lot, it became harder to like as the years passed, given the issues involved in keeping older water-cooled VWs on the road.
I now have a Volvo 240 wagon as my daily, and I don’t think I’ll have much trouble selling it if/when the time comes. I’ve also got a ’04 XC90 that needs a couple things and a smog check, and whether I go back to it as a daily or decide to sell it, I don’t think it’ll be a problem: they’re pretty vault-like and comfortable to drive those first-gen XC-90s.
My brother’s R53 Mini Cooper S (silver, 6MT) has been parked in my driveway for three months (four?) now as he is lackadaisically trying to sell it. He put it up on Craigslist and FB and I believe he left it at that – but no one is going to look at an ad which is 130 days old. I am getting verrrrrry tired of having to move it around every time I want to get my kei car out of the garage; he must be tired of paying insurance on it…
My mechanically sound e36 was kind of difficult to get rid of last Summer. I priced it a little high, expecting to get offered lower. Priced it for what I wanted and sold it a couple of days later for asking. Best case scenario really, it went out of town and to a mountainous region where it’d be enjoyed.
I figured since it was warm out, a reasonably priced fun car would have gone fast. After selling, I started to see auto e36 listed for more (and sitting) as well as heavily clapped out / broken examples priced for not much less than I sold for. Bizarre.
My Jeep Grand Cherokee. I tried selling the fucker 3 times before I was successful. Turns out people are not waiting in line to buy a old SUV with a 4.7 HO engine when fuel prices are at 7 dollars per gallon.
Dad bought our ’64 F100 coach-built crewcab in 1965 when I was 10 (yeah I’m old). In the mid 70’s it got rolled on the left side, slid into a tree branch and smashed the cab in over the driver and the branch broke off (saving my sibling) and dented the dashboard. We, as a family, debated for quite a while whether to sell it off, or fix it. We did put it for sale and got an offer, but we finally decided to keep it and fix it up. I own it now and I hope to do a proper restoration of it to fix the half-assed roof repair and restore the rest of the 350k mile truck and original drivetrain.
Well, since I still have the second car I ever bought, a ’67 VW Squareback I purchased in 1978. In 1984 I needed to get rid of four of my six vehicles as we were heading out for an amost year-long honeymoon in our ’76 VW ASI Camper bus.
I waffled about whether to keep the squareback or the ’64 VW sunroof deluxe bus that was utterly reliable but had a little rust. I knew at the time that the bus would be worth more in the long run than the squareback, but I still kept the squareback.
Not a single one in 30 years, I always priced them to sell, not for (big) profit.
’04 ford focus zx3 pzev 2.3 auto. By the time I got rid of it it was a great little car, prior to that it was, well, god awful. After I’d tried to sell it(for the third time without success) and it sat for more than a year I gave it to my baby sister as a wedding present. She turned around and sold it within a week over in Idaho where she had moved with her new hubby. I hated that stupid car, but it made me want another one because the good aspects were fantastic but my particular one had been ill-used prior to my getting it.
One, a Suzuki Sidekick, but turns out only because FB marketplace sucks. I got precisely one response in about 6 months. I think facebook had essentially shadow removed the listing without notifying me. When I reposted again (at the same price), I received dozens of inquiries and sold the car in 2 days
A 1984 Dodge Daytona Turbo. It was a mechanical nightmare from the start. When I couldn’t cope any longer no one would buy it because I owed too much on it. When I tried to trade it in some dealers told me point blank that they didn’t want a Dodge on their lot. A Chevy dealer took it in trade and I bought a 1986 Caprice, one of the best cars I’ve ever owned.
Every person who didn’t buy that used Daytona from you made a very good decision (sorry not sorry).
A basket case 914 project. I think it’s on a trailer at my dads house still after he kindly took it out of my garage.
Man, I had my 1966 Plymouth for 25 years before finally dumping the project realizing I will never get it done. I both wanted and didn’t want to part with it. I was moving and taking it to the new house to sit and gather dust…I found it a good home.
The only cars I could not get rid of are some of the toy cars from my childhood.
In terms of actual cars I have owned, I’ve never had a problem getting rid of any of them. By the time I’m getting rid of them, they are near or at the end of their service lives and usually either need a ton of work or are only good for scrap/parts.
And I have no problem getting rid of them because sell for a reasonable price and don’t do the idiotic ‘I know what I’ve got’ thing.
As for future cars I might own/buy, I can’t think of anything that I wouldn’t be able to sell at some point for one reason or another.
Once I get my Ferrari 365 GTS/4 Daytona I’ll never be able to sell it. It has to be Yellow.
Funny – I read this as “what car can/could you not *bring* yourself to get rid of”
I’ve always been able to sell/trade in cars when I put my mind to it, but I continue to be stuck on the fence with one of my current vehicles to this day:
in 1998, my recently retired mother bought a like new green 1997 Honda Del Sol VTEC (5m) that had been traded in at the local BMW dealership in Las Vegas. It had ~3500 miles on it, functional A/C, and most importantly a removable roof.
That car remained her constant companion as my dad moved from old school Grand Wagoneer to BMW 325 Sedan to BMW 328 Convertible. Of course, aside from getting groceries or commuting to her various volunteer positions, it spent precious little time on the road.
In 2010, she was diagnosed with brain cancer, went into remission in 2011, and then succumbed in 2013.
I ended up taking possession of the little gremlin after she passed, carrying all of ~37k miles (and a few admittedly significant dings she compiled while in remission). I used it as a summer commuter car for a while, taking care to garage it at my parents’ house down south during the snow and salt heavy Utah winters.
In 2018 or so, I did a +2 wheel/tire replacement to get rid of the curb rashed OEM rolling stock, put some performance tires on, and to slide into some slightly taller gearing in hopes of both making freeway speeds a bit more bearable and correct the ~10% speedo error common in Del Sols of that era. More recently, I did a second upgrade on the sound system – not a high end retrofit by any stretch, but it at least makes music audible with the roof off. I continue to drive it in the summers only, and garage it either in Utah, or at my dad’s old house in Vegas – it’s rocking about 77k miles at present.
Despite all of that, it is just not a nice car to be in for an extended period of time – the wind buffeting above 70 is terrible, it still spins at well over 4k at 80, and it lacks any semblance of torque, requiring one or more downshifts to navigate the mountain passes that surround me. I’d love to look into forced induction and maybe a taller final drive/Integra transmission to address the inherent drivability issues…there are also a few age-related problems…the seats could benefit from a recover and/or the addition of some fresher foam (and maybe seat heaters?), the windshield washer pump seized up a few years back, the armrests do what all Del Sol armrests do, the carpet is very tired, the OEM antenna just fell apart…nothing big, but a lot of stuff to ensure that I want to keep driving it – probably more than I’m really interested in doing.
So now I find myself wanting something that retains the drop top, but has a bit more usability and comfort (older S5, Boxster, 2/3/4 series BMW convertible, a Merc SLK, or maybe even a C5/C6 vette). However, every time I start looking, I think that maybe I could just use the potential delta between selling the Sol and buying a replacement to fix all of the above stuff up (despite knowing that would end up with a slightly upgraded – and admittedly fun – sentimental car rather than one that I *really* want to own/drive).
So here I sit…
I read this as “what car can/could you not *bring* yourself to get rid of”
Ok not just me.
It’s the Autopian, right? We’re all supposed to have unnatural attachment to weird cars! Well, not supposed to but do anyway. So of course we all read it that way.
And yet here I still think about getting another Honda Del Sol, I still miss the blue one I had that got stolen and stripped.
Me too. And it’s my Fit.
Same! For me it was my 63 Falcon Wagon, that I purchased on a whim and a nascent love of the Falcon in all its forms.
They started enforcing parking rules where I lived and I also had a hard time justifying my 3-car house hold when there was only 1 driver. It was drivable, but had body issues and such, so it was a hard sale in the pre-FB Marketplace days. Ended up calling the boneyard just before I was leaving on vacation to haul it away. 🙁
I hope its parts live on…
Not me but a buddy a couple years ago could not get rid of a mechanically sound early to mid 00s Civic. It had a few things working against it. First off was that it looked bad, it had been involved in a small collision where the hood was replaced and due to it being cheaply sprayed the paint was chipping from the hood and was rusty. If someone made it past that they were put off by the fact that the car was a manual but was not an SI or anything that would otherwise attract enthusiasts. It ended up sitting then falling into disrepair then eventually scrapped. Not sure it was ever posted to marketplace or anything like that but multiple people who were just looking for any basic transportation looked at it then walked away without even trying to make an offer.
Poor 7th Gen Civic! They are the least loved, but quite the capable workhorses. Mine will roll 200K this year, once the snow and salt is done punishing the Rust Belt.