Used Car Sales

Good Morning -

I have only owned three cars in my life time. I say "only", but then wonder if that's actually a lot. As I've mentioned, I'm just about 35, so have only been a legal driver for 19 years, which makes for an average of 6 years per car.

Except that most of those 19 years were actually carless. I didn't buy my first car until I graduated from college, which was 5 years into being a licensed driver.

And what was my first, post-B.A. car? A Porsche? A Lexus? No - it was my boyfriend's friend's 1975 Volvo, which I got for $300 (My B.A. was in Art History and Humanities, with a minor in Italian and I was working at a small non-profit in Boulder for $14,000/yr.). At the time of purchase, I thought this friend was being super generous and giving me the friend's girlfriend discount. I learned to drive stick on this car, so attributed the awkward driving to my awkward driving.

Two months and three tows later, though, I finally abandoned the car. It had had 180-some thousand miles on it when I purchased it and just over that when I gave it to the auto shop next to my dad's butcher shop in exchange for towing it from the side of the highway to the shop.

I hope my ex's friend had fun with the $300.

My next car was 5 years later, when I bought a brand new Toyota Tacoma pick-up truck as a tribute to my first, real teaching job in San Antonio. It was the absolute, most basic model you could get - no fancy wheels, not jacked up, no back seat, no CD player, hand-cranked windows and locks, etc.

It had a bench seat, so I could only have passengers who were my height or shorter, or else they would end up eating their knees during the drive (plus, I do sit close to the wheel - I don't like to stretch while driving, especially when there's a clutch involved). It was simple and white and I loved it.

It was the first new car I had ever driven, let alone owned. The cars I grew up in were old, unreliable clunkers that, while teaching me a lot about quick, DIY, side-of-the-road repairs, were nothing like a brand new car. They, too, had a distinctive smell but it wasn't that new car smell.

While my mom and us kids had driven around in the clunkers, my dad had decided that he needed a new car to get him to work, so purchased a brand new Toyota truck when I was in grade school. (It's patriarchy. Both of my parents worked a lot to make ends meet, and both worked far from where we lived, but I think he must have believed that his paycheck was more critical so it was more important for him to have the reliable new car.)

He amassed 200,000+ miles onto that truck, so I knew that new cars could be great (he didn't let anyone else drive his truck, so I only knew its greatness as passenger and witness). I knew that Toyotas seemed to make excellent cars that would last and last and last, and pictured putting my own 200,000+ miles on my own little truck.

I drove that truck for 6 years, including the last year which was note-free and totally paid off (that was my favorite year). I drove it from San Antonio to Denver for more than one family gathering, and I towed it behind the big moving truck when I moved from San Antonio, TX to Sierra Vista, AZ.

Some 60,000 miles later though, during the summer between year one and year two of my MSW program, I decided to sell it. I was getting around Tucson primarily on foot or bike and needed the cash to catch up with rent (no student loans during the summer, and my summer job at the school didn't even come close to covering my expenses) and to fund my trip at the end of the summer to Chiapas, Mexico to work on my thesis.

I sold it to a local Toyota dealership and am quite sure I didn't get a good deal. I got what I needed, though, and didn't feel like playing hardball.

I hope whoever bought it is having fun with it.

When I graduated the following May and landed my first "real" MSW job, I was told that I would need a car. I didn't have a car for the first three weeks of training and had to catch rides with the woman I was replacing as she trained me. I was so stressed about what I would do when she moved on and I didn't have my own transportation. Tucson public transportation is nothing you can rely on if you really need to, so that wasn't a choice.

Most of my carless years in Denver between the Volvo and the move to San Antonio had been great because they have such a great bus system and the weather supports biking/walking most of the year, so I hadn't even noticed that I was carless at that time. In Tucson, you know when you don't have a car.

Desperate, I contacted my credit union to see if I could qualify for a loan. I was earning ok money (less than when I was teaching, and less than I should have been getting with my degree, but I had been so scared I wouldn't find work after graduation that I had taken the first thing that came along), but my credit wasn't hot, so I wasn't sure.

Happily, though, I qualified for a little loan and commenced looking for a car that fit the price-range. Via Craigslist, I found a listing for a great 2000 Kia Sephia that had low miles and a great price. I called the number and arranged to meet the owner in the parking lot of the neighborhood grocery store.

We met, I looked at it, and - in my desperation - didn't even drive it. The seller was an immigrant from Russia who was selling it because he was moving to Chicago to be with his wife and family. His story pulled every one of my ego-laced, helper buttons and I agreed on the spot to meet him at my credit union the following morning to exchange cashier's check for keys. I went that night to my partner's (who was a friend at the time) and told her and her partner at the time all about the great car I had just gotten and how relieved I was that I'd have the car for the job I needed.

The next morning at the credit union I sat in the lobby with my new Russian friend as the loan officer worked up the paperwork. The language barrier was pronounced (he had had a friend translating the night before), so mostly we just smiled and fidgeted.

Suddenly the loan officer called me back with a dramatic whisper and told me that she couldn't give me an auto loan for the car because it had a salvaged title. In my naivete, I didn't even know what that meant. She explained and I, desperate because I needed the car to get me to a meeting across town in an hour, told her to try to approve me for a personal loan instead of an auto loan. I said that if that went through, I'd go through with it, taking it as a sign that it was okay to go forward.

I got approved, exchanged cashier's check for keys and broken title, spend a harried few minutes on the sidewalk securing insurance for it over the phone, and then raced off to my meeting. A different time and a different me.

Two months later, I was giving notice to my job. A year after that, the organization would have seen all of its upper management escorted off the property, the stepping down of its ED, and its absorption by the other agency in town doing the same work. I was at the start of the end of the organization and the reasons I cited for quitting became many of the reasons that killed them in the end.

That was almost two years ago and I still have the Kia. I barely drive it because I live close to work and parking on site is a nightmare. With all of the changes coming down, though, I've decided that I need to sell it. It won't go where we're going and it's best to leave it here.

It'll be the first time I sell a car (I don't consider what I did at the dealership "selling" because they handled everything and it was painless and relatively effortless, which, true, came with a (lower) price) and I'm not sure how to go about it. I took the car to my mechanic yesterday and had her check everything so I could say with honesty exactly how the car is to prospective buyers. While I'd like to include the wording from the car ad on the Virgen, I don't know how honest that would be and want this to be an honest deal.

Maybe it's because we drove such clunkers growing up. Maybe it's because I know how important having a reliable car for transportation can be. Maybe it's because I know how hard it is to find a good car when your resources are limited. Maybe it's just because I'm nice, but I want to make sure this deal is as upright and ethical as the selling of a car can be. I want transparency, fairness, and a good deal that leaves everyone feeling blessed.

Here's to that. Here's to used car sales and here's to buying and selling with integrity.