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Buying a Car at Auction: Part 4
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If you've been faithfully reading my four part series on Buying a Car at Auction, you will know that I did my research and went to both a public and a dealer's only auto auction. By going to the auctions and checking prices on both Kelly Blue Book and Edmund's websites, I knew what cars were selling for in today's market. Since gas is reasonably affordable these days at around $2.40 a gallon, the Toyota Prius is not selling at a premium as it was when gas prices were way up.
The 2004 - 2009 Prius all share the same basic exterior shape. I wasn't in the market for a new Prius and I didn't want to go for an older first generation Prius, so I had my target car picked out. I had also tried out the back with the seats folded down to make sure I could sleep in it if need be on a long trip. The Toyota Prius's that I saw at auction were a bit more expensive than I wanted due to their low mileage.
My list of must have options included leather seats and navigation, so that limited my choices a bit. Since leather was rare on earlier Prius models, I didn't rule out having leather installed after I made the purchase. I was finding some good cars online so I started calling the dealers and owners and scheduling test drives.
The first car I drove was a 2005 with 85,000 miles and navigation, but no leather. The dealer was asking $10,900 and let me take it out for a spin. It was pretty clean for a car with that many miles, and I have good faith in the reliability of the Toyota Prius. I expect to be able to go well over 100,000 miles with out any problems. After the test drive, I found that the dealer didn't want to move off of the price, so I told them I'd think about it and went on to drive a few more cars.
Several local dealers had nice cars with around 60,000 miles which included warranties up to 100,000 mile. Of course the prices were much higher because of the warranty and leather, and they ranged from around $16,000 - $18,000. Nice cars, but that was a bit more than I wanted to spend.
I found one car that was a bit over an hour away but decided against going to see it since it had around 80,000 miles and was around the same price as the one a bit closer to me. Finally I stumbled upon a local seller who was getting rid of his car because he never drove it due to his living in the city and taking the metro all of the time.
This one was a 2004 with navigation and around 65,000 miles. He was asking $12,000 which seemed to be an OK price, but of course I hadn't seen the car yet. After a few conversations I let him know that I was a serious buyer and that if the car looked good when I saw it I would take buy the car that day. We had actually agreed on a $10,000 price before I met him.
The car didn't look as good as it did in the pictures. It had a few very small dings and the back bumper was very scratched due to his parking it in the Washington DC for five years. Being a dog owner, the interior was pretty bad. Overall, cosmetically it was not so good, but it had just had its 60,000 mile service, and it seemed to drive well.
I was prepared to walk away due to the car's ratty appearance, but we worked out a price of $9500 so I agreed to buy the car. This was very close to the dealer trade in value, but since Car Max had offered him less for the car, he was happy to sell it to me for more. We handled the transaction at the bank which is a great secure place to handle car sales.
The raggy interior didn't really bother me since I was going to replace it with leather. I had already priced having leather installed and I was shocked to find that the dealer was actually cheaper than a local interior specialist. The specialist was going to charge around $1600 for the installation while the dealer quoted me $1300 for the factory leather seats, and there's would also be heated!
Juan at Koons Tysons Toyota in Vienna, Virginia took the car in and the next day my Prius looked like it came from the factory with heated leather seats! So basically for $10,800 I got a Toyota Prius with 65,000 miles with navigation and factory leather / heated seats.
I didn't get it at an auction, though I certainly think that buying an auction car could be a great way to save money if you really know what you are doing. You also might want to consider having a local dealer like Carl find the right car for you at an auction. You can also consider EBay, but you should factor in shipping charges, and I think it is definitely better to drive before buying.
I'm very happy with the Prius. I've been getting between 38 and 58 miles per gallon. I'm also thrilled that by driving the Toyota Prius for many years to come, I'll be using about 1/2 of the gas that I would have used if I bought the BMW 540 Touring, Audi S4 Wagon, Lexus Sport Cross Hatchback, or the Volvo 850 / XC70 Wagon. And of course when the windy roads or mild temperatures beckon I can still hop in my Porsche 911 Targa, Lancia Zagato or Infiniti M30 Convertible and have some more spirited driving experiences!
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