Selling car with a scratch

it'smeok · 6 September 2018 at 11:49AM

Hello all
I'd be grateful for your opinion. I have a 2007 seat Ibiza which I am planning to sell. It's done less than 60k miles and is generally in good condition. I was planning to list it at about £2k, and would be prepared to accept say £1,800.

However, I did once scrape some of the paint one of the wheel arches in an underground car park. I would say the damage isn't BAD, but it's obviously visible - perhaps 15cm at its longest, and about 5cm wide.

I've had a quote to repair it for £220. Given the overall value of the vehicle isn't that high, I'm wondering if it's worth it - I could just ready myself to accept, say, £1,600 instead. What do you think? Would it put you off buying completely?

foxy-stoat · 6 September 2018 at 11:54AM

At this price level I wouldnt spend any money on the body work, you will get knocked down anyway, may as well be for something that the punter can easily see and a quick "win" for them.

kmb500 · 6 September 2018 at 11:57AM

As long as you're honest about it to the buyer, I wouldn't bother. People buying sub 2K cars are much more willing to buy a car with dents/scratches than more expensive as they're expecting it to have gone through most of its life. You probably dont even need to knock the price down by too much.

it'smeok · 6 September 2018 at 11:59AM

That's really helpful, thank you! I thought that was probably true but wondered if I was shooting myself in the foot

Bigphil1474 · 6 September 2018 at 12:19PM

OP, if the buyers valuation is based on it being mint, then they'll try and knock more off if they see the scratch. If you list it and mention the scratch in the listing, then it should be fine. Can't see many people buying an 11 year old car being too worried about a scratch if the car is otherwise spot on.

wgl2014 · 6 September 2018 at 12:20PM

Difficult to say without seeing the damage but it's often possible to improve a fair bit by using Tcut or similar. For the sake of a few quid it may be worth trying....

barnaclebill · 6 September 2018 at 1:26PM

Scraped my , wheel arch reversing in bright sun, watched youtube videos on how to repair, bought primer, top coat and clearcoat from Halfords and did the job, three years later I still can not notice it, worth a try.

jimjames · 6 September 2018 at 5:29PM

If everything else is good, full service history and decent ownership records then scratch will be fairly irrelevant. Condition of other parts & history is more important at that age at least if I'm looking at a car. Scratch can be fixed easily, broken engine with lack of oil can't be so easily sorted.