Selling You Car Easy-Peesy

I remarket and sell on average 40 used cars a month in my day job. I am constantly scanning adverts placed by traders and private sellers alike to keep pace with the market. In doing so I have noticed a fault in many adverts which is practically guaranteed to kill interest especially in a flooded market. When placing an advert to sell your car there are some basic items of information that car shoppers are looking for upfront. Neglecting to mention this information exasperates potential buyers and they may well discard your advert in favour of someone else’s ad. This shouldn’t really be a surprise as often replacing a car is trying and stressful for buyers and they do not want to be lead up the garden path by adverts that ommit basic information.

Adverts that read, “Ford Focus, Good condition, selling for genuine reason. £/$ 3000 ONO” tell the shopper practically nothing. I’m going to be asking myself how old is this car and what kind of mileage has it done? Is it petrol or diesel, manual or automatic? What size engine, body style?
Actually, know what? I’m not going to ask because just below this ad is another. And this one gives me all these answers!

I’ve listed a car below and all the necessary information that will give the car shopper all the information they need to judge whether they will be interested in looking in more detail at the car. The car I’m going to list is the popular Honda Civic. Our buyer may or may not know the general details of this make. The fact though is that there are many widely differing variations of this car particularly in Europe with the added diesel fuel variations. Our buyer will want more specific details about the car before they can consider it or they will just move on to the next advert. This is especially so if the advertised car is a popular and common car!

Not to worry though, most of the required information should be easy enough to gather from your car’s handbook, the title papers or even by using the VIN number to access the vehicle report summary page.

Example:
2005 Honda Civic EX SE,1.7L Sedan 4D Petrol/Gas Automatic, 60,000 miles, Cruise Control, Air Conditioning, Power Steering

2005:
Year of manufacture and registration

Honda Civic:
List the make, easy enough., we should all know this!

EX SE:
Manufacturer’s produce various levels of a model from basic to more sporty or executive models.

1.7L:
This describes the engine size and can also be written as 1700cc.

Sedan:
This describes the style or body and should include the number of doors especially if the car is a hatchback so as to distinguish between a 3 or 5 door cars for instance. The boot or trunk lid is counted as a door if a hatchback in Europe.

Petrol:
Usually petrol or diesel, but also possibly LPG, dual fuel, hybrids or electronic fuel types.

Automatic:
Gear type. Usually automatic or manual (stick shift).

60,000 miles:
The true mileage. The odometer reading exactly.

Cruise Control, Air Con etc:
This is the specification the car was built with and may or may not include any paid for extras which may add additional value to the car.

These are the main points any serious buyer will want to see in an advertisement or auction. This will allow them to quickly establish whether your car is suitable for their needs and if so, compare with other similar cars before contacting you to discuss further and if all goes well and a price is settled, to buy!!