Nick M.K.

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Removed duplicated post.

Your price is £1525 OVNO. Get rid of the OVNO. Don't give punters too much hope. Drop the price to £1500 exactly to appear in more searches or to £1490 so you beat hundreds of cars at the £1495 price point. Stay a bit back from the car when you photograph it On your ad you have a mileage of 52414, the dash shows 52466. Keep the figures exactly the same or round the mileage to 50K to appear in much more searches. Put a bit more text in your ad, tell them about your convenient location or list more of the options of the car. It's a heatwave and I can't see the words AIR CONDITIONING anywhere. 8 stamp service history, take a photo and show it. EVERY LITTLE MINOR DETAIL MAKES A DIFFERENCE in car sales online and means people will simply go buy somewhere else if you don't have an eye for detail.

Same one, same car. Taken in p/x in AUG '17, left in my storage yard until November '17. In Aug I had thought of advertising it for £3990 but couldn't get round to it. This was very lucky indeed.

Last winter I sold a very nice and clean but not very low mileage 2002 BMW Z3 2.2 with the smallest 6 cyl engine, 74K miles. £7389, listed it in November, sold it just after Christmas after a lot of interest, multiple calls, emails, website hits etc. The BMW specialists on the old AT forum thought the price was quite high but the market clearly didn't.

45-60 years old, the "I've always wanted one of these" type who couldn't own one until the kids grew up, someone with at least one more car or van on their drive and someone who would not be interested in that car if the price was under £2K. Also don't compare prices on a 4 cylinder and 6 cylinder BMW E46s. It's the big old petrols everyone wants.

I think they start with a loose idea of what they want to spend, then start looking at the cheapest available stock, then increase their budget after they see a couple of "not-as-tidy-as-we-had-hoped" examples and ultimately pay a completely different figure to what they started with. Exactly the same process I go through every time I book a hotel for a short holiday (only I do it all online)...

Still worth 10% of it's price when new.

Can I guess it James? German. Automatic. White. Dark wheels.

Allow them some room to make "a bit" of profit :-)

Mechatronic unit refurbed is only £290ish from ACTronics and 1.5 hours labour to replace. DSG clutch pack is £350 from TPS and 2-3 hours labour from memory.

What year, engine / gearbox, mileage and did you mean to say Multitronic rather than Mechatronic? If you really meant Mechatronic how was this diagnosed as the shudder is more likely to be a clutch pack?

Easiest resolution is to try and ask the dealer to refund them less a small amount for usage. The kind of dealer that hides write off damage will usually just say **** **F! Second easiest (assuming you can not sell a Cat D car) is for them to try and sell the BMW privately for close to what they paid for it. Luckily because the car is so old but not quite a classic the difference in values may not be massive and there is always someone on the market after an e46 Convertible. The next option of course is for them to start legal proceedings against that dealer to recover the price they paid for the car.

Good question this, from a new trader. An obvious benefit is that the VAT Man can not come and say that you waited too long to register and try and back-charge you. If you like to add value and get VAT invoices for everything that you do to your cars (repairs, bodywork, parts, wheels, tyres, advertising etc) AND your margins aren't huge you might as well register now. If however you don't have a lot of costs to claim back there is not much point in paying 20% of your margin while you are allowed not to pay it for another few weeks / months.

AD, I don't touch mechanical stuff, I don't want them for me. I want to give them to one of the mechanics I've used for many years to save him the welding, chiseling and all the other stuff he normally does. He likes his tools but I know he won't spend £100(+) on this :-)

It wouldn't be, he is nearer to Heathrow than to Kensington & Chelsea. 40 flats in K&C would be a nice exit strategy for a small independent dealer though...

The cheapest Dynomec set I found now is around £170 and they have no option to buy online on their website, no pricing either. Will call them on FRI pm when they are in a good mood to try and spend a hundred quid with them :-)

A friend of mine with a nice corner lot in West London is thinking along the same lines but he wants a flat for each car currently in stock. The planning department has already said yes to 24 flats but he wants a high rise with nearly 40 :-)

Nothing wrong growing your business with minimum corporation tax and investor dividends to pay :-) Unless you are that investor of course...

If you have a close-up photo and the customer loses the locking key you can supply them with a replacement depending on the car make. For a nominal fee of only £49.99 plus postage.

Did you mean to write "are" VAT registered?

Nissan dealers used to offer to buy even old Navaras with the chassis rust, then scrap them. I don't know if they still do. You can book it in your local dealership for a free check and wait to hear what they'll offer.

Yesterday I needed to buy one BMW alloy wheel quickly and found one on eBay not far. £60 (just a bit dearer than a weld repair on a cracked one). Pressed Buy It Now, paid him with PayPal and collected it within a couple of hours. No haggling, no best offers. When I went to collect the guy said that he sells bits on eBay all the time and he never had someone buy so easy. He gets emails all the time, best offers, retractions of offers etc. The only platform generating more grief for him was Facebook :-)

If you have ANY chance to make money dealing in used cars certain models / engines / gearbox combinations should be absolutely off-limits. There should be cars that you just shouldn't look at. Just one of many many examples of a half-decent car, a good seller that you shouldn't have on your pitch: Nissan Navarra.

Yes, agree, their prices also depend on the numbers of auction stock so when their own stock at BCA reduces their prices increase. My personal answer to this would be "I could, but I hope I don't have to".