HARD SELL

THE ‘JOYS’ OF SELLING A CAR IN THE INTERNET AGE

- SIMON MAJOR

YOU know, trying to sell a car these days has got to be the automotive equivalent of flopping your old fella out onto a bench and hammering nails through it. Actually, that might even be less painful.

We’re an eight-car family, with another on the way, so I figured the time had come to thin the herd – we do live on a normal house block, after all. First, I unloaded an ex-daily ‘nothing’ car for cheap to a mate, then made the tough decision to sell my VF Valiant hardtop, ‘Old Daze’, in the hope of both regaining our patio space and making room for the new project.

Now I’ve owned Old Daze for 20 years, after saving it as a run-down 770 that was languishing in a front yard. In that time I have built it, rebuilt it, raced it and cruised the arse off it. I’m a sucker for vehicular attachment, so I knew there was going to be some serious separation anxiety when the time came to hand over the keys to the new owner.

So I got busy tidying it up and generally making it sale-worthy – you know, doing a few jobs that I’d been meaning to do for 20 years so that, crazily, the car ends up better for the next owner that it ever was for me! Why does that always happen?