Paintwork dilemmas before a sale!?

[Gavhanks 0]

I've got a 41,000mile completely standard 97' manual VR6 (even has the original radio).....mechanically its perfect, never been crashed, fsh, the interior is perfect (bar some scratches on the plastic of the drivers door handle where the woman who had it before me kept opening the door with the keys in her hand!)..But.....it's picked up two nice marks on the drivers door from other people opening their doors into it (no dents...just paint scratches), and there's 3 or four other light scratches where the girlfriend's cat keeps jumping on the bonnet and roof.

Is it worth paying to have the paint done properly before I sell it....or should I just advertise it as it is?? How much do you spend on a car before you sell???

[antera309 3]

In the real world, it's very difficult to avoid the odd scratch or stone chip here and there. On an 8-year old car, it's quite acceptable for a few of these to be present, and this is taken into account by valuation guides (like Glass's)

There are some good polishes out there that can effectively cover small scratches (like the ones made by cats! lol!), and it's worth giving one of these a go.

If the scratches in the door are too deep to polish out, you're talking about having the whole door resprayed.

Unless the bodyshop is 100% confident that they can get a perfect colour match, the don't do it. Nothing puts a buyer off more than colour mismatches between panels...

[ Edited Fri Apr 29 2005, 02:15PM ]

[Atlas 12v 0]

A 47,ooo mile VR6 would sell no problems. I'd be honest and show the possible buyers the dents. As 309 says no 8 yr old car will be perfect.

[acf8181 0]

yeah, i think its better to have two very very minor dinks and original paint, than having it srayed and the color not matching. if i viewed a car where the door had abviously been sprayed i'd have a hard time believing that its not been crashed.

[tinny22 11]

are you selling it has it got fvsh

tinny22

[Flog 1]

How much you selling it for?

[Gavhanks 0]

I'll be putting it up for sale sometime soon because I'm moving to New Zealand.

Too be honest I'm not sure how much to ask for it.....I've yet to see another 41000mile, manual VR6 with fsh, that's never been crashed and is completely standard, that's up for sale to get an idea of prices.

I'm not off to NZ until the end of the year, so I'm in no hurry to sell, and obviously...I need the cash to buy a juicy V8 when I get down under....so I'm not going to let it go for silly money.

Any ideas people???

[acf8181 0]

ifs it perfect apart form these 2 dings, and has perfect service history and is 3dr, i reckon maybe £6k.

[ Edited Mon May 02 2005, 10:57AM ]