Volvo S40 value?

February 2, 2006 8:32 PM

Buying a specific used car, how can I determine its value?

I am considering buying a 2001 Volvo S40 Turbo Sedan with 65,000 miles from someone I know. I may pay at once, or over time. We are trying to agree to a price, and I seem to get wildly varying estimates of its real worth from people I talk to and books of value. Thanks!

posted by ac to travel & transportation (6 comments total)

Some things you can do to narrow it down:

1. Is it a salvage? If it is, this knocks the value down big-time. This should be easy to answer if this person bought the car new. If not you should order a vehicle history report.

2. Assuming you've already inspected it yourself for any problems, take it to an auto-mechanic. Are there any big problems with it? (hopefully not since it's a volvo with 65k on it)

3. Check the resale value based on average KBB or NADA estimates. Check eBay motors to see what this car is going for.

4. Balance this against prices in your local market for Volvos of the same model and mileage. Pick up an Auto Trader magazine at your local gas station and see what other people in your area are asking pricewise for the same model.

Find a reasonable price you can both agree on based on this information.

THEN, start subtracting defects from the cost. If the mechanic says it will cost $500 to fix the A/C, that should come out of the pricetag or the current owner should pay to fix it now. YMMV, but this is how I and my relatives have done it for years and it works pretty well, but we buy Hondas and Toyotas used, nothing else :)
posted by tweak at 9:04 PM on February 2, 2006

Another factor is longevity of the car - 65,000 miles isn't too bad, but has the driving been mostly city or mostly highway? A lot of long highway miles in cruise control won't wear down on an automatic transmission so much, for instance. If this person is like me, he or she has been driving the shit out of it primarily in stop and go commuter traffic for most of those miles, and this car might need some major maintenance, another reason to not feel bad about bargaining down on the price..

Also, maintenance is going to cost more per instance because it is a small-market foreign luxury import. I personally wouldn't pay more than 8k for it.
posted by tweak at 9:09 PM on February 2, 2006

Edmunds has some great tools for appraising a car's value, from both the buyer's and the seller's perspective. The site's navigation can be a bit bothersome, but drill down to the make, model and year you're looking at and run their appraisal wizard. I'd provide a direct link, but for some bizarre reason my firewall won't let me load their page.
posted by ZakDaddy at 9:14 PM on February 2, 2006

The 60-80,000 mile mark is about the time when expensive things start needing replacing on cars. I'd check out any popular Volvo forums and read them over to see any discernable patterns in the reliability of various parts.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:40 AM on February 3, 2006

If someone is selling a car at over blue book value then find out why. They may have just done some major repairs to it which may save you something in the near future. If they have added cosmetic things for a value increase (gps, televisions, spinners, etc), look elsewhere unless you can't live without 'em.

The blue book (brown book now?) pretty much goes into the details of what adds or subtracts value including mileage, year, etc. I would take the range that it gives as actual and undisputable value.
posted by JJ86 at 6:02 AM on February 3, 2006

Eh. I wouldn't take Blue Book as gospel, since there are (really!) a few cars out there that may seem overpriced but are actually really good values because of their reliability, and conversely some new-ish cars out there that might still have a good BB value but you know are going to be absolute dogs to maintain/fix.

Just for example, Blue Book on a early-to-mid-90's Mazda Miata with normal mileage (~150k miles) is about $3000. If the owner did nothing more than change the oil, those engines will last 300k miles easily. So it's hard to find them for less than a grand over BB, (unless it's got some serious underlying problems). If you stick to your BB guns (ha!) you could wind up with a real piece of shit.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:41 PM on February 3, 2006