"The value of the car"

Thoie

I see that phrase pop up a few times when people ask what kind of discount they should look for etc. The advice often seems to be don't concentrate on the price it's advertised at, or the discount you'll get, just concentrate on the value of the car.

But what is the value of a car? If you browse the internet, and see that the majority of sites are showing an 08 Carx, Ymodel for around the 12,000 mark, is that the value of the car? Or is it the lone private seller selling it for 4k (in which case it's probably a scam)? If everyone is selling similar cars in a range between 11-13k, do we assume 11 is the value? Or is it fair to assume that even the person selling at 11 is trying to make some vague bit of profit, so the car's value is really 10.5k? Or is there some other secret way of "knowing" a car's value that involves differentiation, the chassis number, two squirrels and a mirror?

Gumbo

its more so what type of car it is, what engine it is, what colour etc etc
as in how many other buyers are out there at the moment looking for the car.

ie a 330i BMW, considering irelands obsession of not buying big engine cars, you would get a better discount on this over a 320d i would imagine.

rebel.ranter

Thoie wrote: »

But what is the value of a car?

Our marketing lecturer would answer this question by saying the following:

"You only know the true value of something once you have sold it"

i.e. It is only worth what someone is actually willing to pay, what price the seller has no true link to its true value.

But that is just being pedantic.:P

maidhc

Value of car = what someone will pay for it.

maidhc

rebel.ranter wrote: »

i.e. It is only worth what someone is actually willing to pay, what price the seller has no true link to its true value.

.. got there before me....

Thoie

So when people are told to think about the value of the car, bearing in mind that they cannot poll every potential buyer, it's the motors equivalent of being told to f*** off?

Gumbo

Thoie wrote: »

So when people are told to think about the value of the car, bearing in mind that they cannot poll every potential buyer, it's the motors equivalent of being told to f*** off?

???

Thoie

kceire wrote: »

???

Hi! Welcome to ginormous leaps of logic

I should possibly explain the chain of logic.

PosterA comes along and asks advice on bargaining/haggling. Usually starts off with "I'm looking at this car that's advertised at 10k, what should I offer?" or "I heard you should always offer 60% of the asking price"

Random people in the forum come along and say "Offer a million, offer a fiver". Then people start discussing the value of the car. It often comes across like there is some secret value written in stone somewhere, that everyone except the original poster knows about, and that the poster would be a fool to pay more than that. But as we've determined, no-one really knows what that value is (it's only worth what someone will pay,as the used car industry essentially operates at a simplistic level as a free market).

So now the original poster goes away feeling foolish, or baffled. They still don't know where to start the bargaining, but have been warned from other advice that starting too low is also a bad thing. This is where my leap of logic came in - I was asking if, by turning the discussion to the value of the car, we're essentially refusing to answer the question (hence the f*** off), rather than coming out and saying that we're unable to answer the question.