Haggling for a used car, what to offer

Hintza

I like the 300C (had one for a year) but if it was me I would be looking at the 3.0D unless I had shares in BP.

missile

A friend has a 300C and says he gets 12 mpg. Not so much of an issue if you do not do many miles. 94K is a lot of miles for a 5 year old car.

£8K sounds expensive to me and I would look for a lower mileage example.

bigjl

Rather than use Parkers which is sometimes very inaccurate, log onto Autotrader and look at what all similar cars are advertised for, this is the most exact way to see how the market is at any given time.

As an example of Parkers, my Subaru Legacy was nicked, and never recovered, had a quick look in Parkers in the newsagents, it said it was worth £4000.

I then checked main dealer for a similar car and checked autotrader nationwide as my car had a factory specced auto gearbox and was pretty rare, 5 registered in the whole of 2004.

End result insurance paid out £8000, the insurance company also confirmed that they work out value according to prices on Autotrader and generally in the trade.

The 5.7 Hemi 300c is considered an "orphan" by the trade, CarGiant had one in recently, a lot, lot cheaper than the diesels. Would be a nice car to keep for years with an LPG conversion, but with the choice of a Merc diesel or an american V8 in any large exec car I would go for the diesel every time.

slangrish

thanks for all your advice so far.. i currently have a range rover with similar mpg so that wouldnt be the end of the world as i only really use it at wknds.. i will go and check it out this wknd and see how flexible the price is, that and explore the lpg conversion option too. if its a no go then i'll happily keep looking, the diesel version might be the better option! the only other thing is i dont have any experience with these cars and am desperate for knowing what potential issues i should be looking for. again if anyone had this car and had something go wrong or knew of a problem affecting them please get in touch.

bigjl

The only thing that I would have checked before purchase is that it can be converted, any good LPG specialist will know.

The reason I say this is that the Hemi V8 300C has the ability to run on 4 cylinders when pootling along to save fuel, or at least that is what I read when they first came to the UK, but a specialist will have all the info' regarding if it can be done.

I would love a big V8, after 10 years in the London Ambulance Service driving our LDV Ambulances with a Rover V8 fitted, the throb of a V8 always make me feel content with my lot, better than the Diesel Mercs anyway. However the 5 mpg when you boot it scares me off from ever buying one to convert into a camper. Though they will get 10mpg if you cruise along, Lol.

slangrish

So went and had a look at the wknd and took it for a test drive. Nice car with a few issues and negotiable on price. Offered with full service, 12 mth mot, tax and warranty. Did notice however that it was advertised with private plates and now hes saying that they won't be included in the sale and that the car is also now registered in their name and not the last owners? is this normal practice?

Kilty_2

slangrish wrote: »

So went and had a look at the wknd and took it for a test drive. Nice car with a few issues and negotiable on price. Offered with full service, 12 mth mot, tax and warranty. Did notice however that it was advertised with private plates and now hes saying that they won't be included in the sale and that the car is also now registered in their name and not the last owners? is this normal practice?

Not normal practise for a dealer to register a car in their name, however what the dealer I traded my last car into did was keep it in my name but change the address to their address for the sake of transferring the private plate to my new car. Didn't know this until I phoned DVLA to ask why I haven't had notification of selling the car and they didn't know who I was!