Oddball Update

Okay, so if you just read my big exciting tale of being “Denied!” a decent trade-in value for my Trans Am, you know that I was walking around with “mortified pride” (hey, didn’t they commit people for that in the forties?) about my current predicament. I originally asked $16,450 for my Trans Am, figuring I’d get $14 or $15 thousand when all was said and done. But now that I need to sell this puppy literally within the next 7 to 10 days, I had to rethink the top dollar strategy. In order to save $2,200 via GM’s Red Tag Sale, I need to move fast. That’s worth a similar reduction in price, at least. Also, I decided that I needed to get realistic. I’m not getting top dollar for this car, not with that dent in the back, and not with the speed I need to move at. I might as well pick a bottom-line figure that I absolutely cannot go below, and work my way up to a new asking price from there.

First, though, I head to LS1GTO and tell of my dealer appraisal experience (in far fewer words, of course), and ask if I am a lunatic for expecting $9,000 for my trade or what. The outpouring of support is immediate and immense. Current and former F-body owners (and there are a lot of them on LS1GTO) confirm that I was getting screwed, and start recommending me other message boards where I can advertise my car online. One nice woman even posts a link to my “WS6 For Sale” website on one of her favorite F-body boards. Other folks chime in with their trade-in and private sale stories, most of whom are people who used to own a ‘98-’01 WS6 or Camaro SS. They all check out my WS6 photos and specs, and everyone agrees that the values I was being quoted are ridiculous. One guy says, “I would have punched the salesman in the face if they offered me $4800 for a mint condition WS6.” Okay, yes, I have one tiny dent that can barely be seen. I don’t think this should halve the value of my car.

But it’s clear that a dealer is more likely to piss and moan about things like that, reinforcing my belief that a private sale is the way to go. Since I need the car to move, I start posting all over message boards. I post on LS1GTO, the Gulf Coast F-body Association’s board, and LS1Tech, the latter being one of the biggest LS1 tech boards on the Web. I edit my web page, my AutoTrader ad, and submit a new listing to Craigslist. My new asking price? $11,995.

Yes, it’s a far cry from the $15k that I wanted, but as I said, I have to get serious. If I need the car sold, I need to price it to move. Besides, I worked out the numbers and found my minimum selling price, which, combined with the Red Tag Sale, my payments on the GTO come in at under $500 a month, which is target territory. Especially since I’ll only be making those payments until we sell our house, at which point we’ll pay off both our car loans. (There shouldn’t be much of a loan left on the Mazda6 by then…the principal balance is already down to $9,000.)

Well, I think stumbled upon the reason why nobody was calling about my car before. Within two hours of updating my ads and web presence, I received three calls, all with serious offers attached.

One guy happened to stumble across my site by typing “WS6 transam for sale” into MSN search, where my site comes up on the first page of results. He lives in Toronto (yes, he would actually fly down to get the car) and wants to buy it and take delivery between Christmas and New Year’s, which is my exact timeline. My problem is he only has $10,000 to spend, no more, which means he will want to come down from that. I want to come down from $11,995, not $10,000. Add to that the unfriendly manner in which he speaks to me, which puts me off. Finally, he is going to make a big ordeal out of inspecting the car, compression testing it and soforth — which I understand, obviously; I did the same thing to my Formula 350 when I bought it — but he wants it done at a Pontiac dealer. Great, that ought to be fun — because when you want a Pontiac dealer in Naples, you get DeVoe or you get jack shit. Like I really want my car showing up there after the trade-in debacle! They’ll probably make up some shit that’s wrong with it to scare the guy off and force me to trade it to them as revenge, the sick fucks.

So, I tell the Canadian guy I’ll consider his offer and get back to him soon (he wants to arrange to fly down ASAP if I accept, of course, but I’m not willing to pull the trigger on that deal just yet). Fortunately for me, shortly after I hang up on that call, Apple phones me up. She happened to mention my car to a friend at work, and her friend is interested. She wants me to take some photos of my car right away and PIX message them to her, so I do. She then calls back and said the girl she works with was interested, so I should drive to her workplace tonight at 9:00 after their shift so the girl can check it out. Sweetness.

At 8:47, I get in the car and head to Apple’s restaurant. The windows are down and Genesis’ self-titled 1983 album is blasting on the stereo. I’m a little behind schedule, so I’m not surprised when my cell phone rings about halfway there — I figure Apple is calling to see if I’m on my way. To my surprise, I see an unfamiliar number from an unfamiliar area code. I answer. It’s a young woman who saw my ad on LS1Tech and is calling to inquire about the car. Holy shit, they’re beating a path!

This girl is a real friendly sort. She shares a lot of the same opinions about cars, recently owned an ‘01 Camaro SS with some ridiculously low amount of miles, and sold it for a whopping $26,000. I guess she’s got the F-body bug again because now she wants my car. She called her boyfriend and he looked at my website and approves. She asks me some questions, then wants to know if she can come over to look at the car on Monday. She lives on the east coast of Florida about three hours away, and says that all of the best used cars her family has ever bought have come from Naples! I tell her she’d be welcome to come check it out anytime, but I am on my way to have the car inspected by another prospect, so we agree that I will call her back tomorrow to confirm she can still come by on Monday if it isn’t sold. I didn’t get too many details from Apple about her friend’s level of interest, so I didn’t know if I’d be having an immediate sale on my hands or not. Lastly, I say I want to move quickly, and how soon was she looking to take delivery if she likes the car. She said within the next two weeks, which I believe I can make work for me.

I get to the restaurant, and Apple’s co-worker comes out and looks at the car. She seems to like it, and calls over one of her friends who also looks at it and seems quite taken with it. She does not seem to balk at the price range Apple gave her, which was $11,000-$13,000. She wants to call us on Monday with something — a decision on whether she wants to test drive it? Buy it? I’m not quite sure, as her English isn’t perfect — but I tell her I need to know by tomorrow, because I have another prospect, so she agrees. By the time Apple gets off work tomorrow afternoon, we should know something more. If not, I’m gonna call up my other prospect and tell her to come on by anytime she wants. Mr. Canada can take a backseat. A local sale would be so much easier.

So tomorrow I’ll clean up the car again (it got dusty from all the driving around today, and covered with fingerprints and smears thanks to the guys at DeVoe). I’ll juggle my leads some more, hopefully make some progress. I’ll also call Roger at McNamara and see if he has the paperwork on the car yet, and if I can get a delivery date. (A couple of the other guys on LS1GTO are in the same “early delivery” predicament as me, and a few of them got their delivery dates.) After all, if I’m going to offer my WS6 for fire sale prices, I want to make sure my GTO is really on its way!

Also, if you happened to take note of the timestamps on these last two posts, you know I am completely out of my mind.

And now, I’m off to bed. Goodnight.

Categorized as Cars, Cars/GTO, Cars/GarageBlog