What's the best way to sell my car in a different state?

March 22, 2011 7:53 PM

I bought a Mini Cooper S in 2003. I loved the car and drove it a moderate amount until Christmas 2009, when I had to leave it at my father's house in Ohio and fly back to Chicago for work. I ended up leaving it there, and moving to New York City, where I'm clearly not going to be needing it for a while. So I need to sell the car. It's in pretty good shape, with remarkably low mileage (about 50,000 miles). Unfortunately, by now the battery is completely dead. I have no idea how to go about getting it fixed, or appraising it, or listing it for sale. What's the best way of getting it listed and sold?
posted by catsclaw to Travel & Transportation (8 answers total)

I would replace the battery and see if it starts. Assuming that the car is "in pretty good shape," Kelly Blue Book suggests around $10,000.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 8:29 PM on March 22, 2011

Might as well try to charge it or jump it before you buy a new battery. I wouldn't count on the battery holding a charge, but if you get it started, you'll be better equipped to determine whether anything else is wrong with it.
posted by box at 8:52 PM on March 22, 2011

If you haven't changed a battery that came with the car in 2003, it will need replacing now whether you were using it or not.

Also, it wouldn't hurt to drain all the oil and replace it with fresh before you first start it.
posted by flabdablet at 10:34 PM on March 22, 2011

How you do this depends on how much time your father (or someone else who lives near the car) is willing to put into it. Somebody surely needs to buy and install a new battery and get it started. To make it test-driveable you'll then need to buy insurance and renew the plates, if those things have been allowed to lapse. The sale price is likely to be highest if you sell to a private buyer, but that means someone has to take phone calls, wait around for people to show up, negotiate, etc.; it's real work to sell a car. You might look into CarMax (not a recommendation; I haven't used them) as a relatively quick-n-easy alternative.
posted by jon1270 at 3:02 AM on March 23, 2011

wait. Christmas 2009? Has it been driven on a regular basis since then? If not then I'm afraid you might have to take some sort of loss when selling this thing.
posted by zombieApoc at 5:44 AM on March 23, 2011

If you parked it with gas in the tank, you should have the tank drained. Gas goes bad after a couple of months. New gas should make it easier to start.
posted by davismbagpiper at 11:19 AM on March 23, 2011

Response by poster: It hasn't been driven on a regular basis (I asked my father, but he neglected to). Do I really need to register the car, buy insurance, and renew the plates? That sounds expensive, and I'm not going to be driving it.
posted by catsclaw at 7:24 PM on March 23, 2011

As with many things, the amount of money you'll get when you sell the car is fairly proportionate to the amount of effort you put into the sale.

If you need to make as much money as possible from this car, you'll need to do some maintenance, take great photos, list it on Mini forums, talk to a bunch of tire-kicking looky-loos, etc.

If you don't need to make money from it, just find somebody who'll tow it away and give you a few bucks in return. Many junkyards offer this service.

There is, of course, a world of options in between these two.
posted by box at 7:33 PM on March 23, 2011