Trip to Carmax

Quick note--due to the gentle objections of a dear friend of mine I will tone down the verbiage in this blog.  :-)  Now you know what the inside of my head is like, and I'll censor more effectively from now on.  Those of you who would like to can fill in your own choice vocabulary as you deem appropriate.

So I'm thinking of selling Birdy and getting another car.

In fact, the problem is I've been thinking about that for a long time now (read: three months after I got Birdy), without the money to actually upgrade.  But after this summer, hopefully my husband and I will both have worked full-time and have accumulated some money, and I can pick out a nice newer car that maybe doesn't have 182000 miles and maybe isn't plagued with a misfire and an oil leak.  (finger cross)  So in preparation I've been stalking Craigslist for the best deals on 2004 Civics and whatnot, and I've been trying to figure out what to do with my car.  I think at this point we've decided to give it to a family member instead of even trying to sell the beast, but before that I was at least a little curious about what Carmax thought.

I recruited one of my best friends and the two of us trekked over to Carmax in my awful vehicle.  Would they say $500?  Would they say $800?  I wasn't even hoping for $1000 given the terrible value you get for trade-ins at dealerships.  We walked in and a very pleasant lady sat us down and talked to us about what they would do with the car if they bought it, which happened to be selling it as a parts car for the same price they paid us.  Without thinking (because my BS sensor was going off), I said, "Well how do you generate a profit?" and the lady looked a little taken aback (had no one asked her this in several years working there?) and said that the buyers were charged a fee to come to the sale and that was where their money came from.  Cool.  Just curious.  Anyway, after some small talk she pulled up on the screen that the mechanical stuff checked out (wouldn't happen now), the aesthetics were all right, and the frame looked like it hadn't been damaged in a wreck, and they were going to offer me $1000 for it.  $1000?  Really?  One thing the lady was sure to tell me was that I was near a "benchmark mileage" (180000) which if I passed it, would lower the car's value.  So who knows what the thing is worth now that it's got the knock sensor out and a couple thousand more miles?  Maybe $750?

Let's all just hope she lasts me through the summer.