Right, final preparations are underway of auto-samuri for the fun and games that are part-exing it. I’m not interested in selling it privately so don’t bother suggesting that.

It’s…a little tatty. Great inside, no problems there. When I clean it up it’ll look great. Outside….hmmm. Wheels are a bit battered. I’m sure once I clean them (I never have in 7 years), there will be loads of scraped bits on the alloy. Are there any alloy wheel paints/touch up products that are any good?

Paintwork. There’s one small ding on the rear wing and a variety of scratches you’d associate with a 9 year old car.

I guess my question is, do people who sell cars a lot more regularly than me think there’s any benefit in doing this stuff or will the car trader just take a quick look at it and give me the book price?

Make it look like you care about it but dents and alloys they can do cheaper so probably not worth it. Don’t expect a clean inside and out to add £1000s but worth a tenner at the local handwash place

On the basis it’s at least 7 years old, unless it’s something in demand, I doubt they’ll move further than the book on their desk, so may never see the car and your hard work.

Last one We sold I took to the local car wash. Chaps did it inside and out far better than I would have bothered for about £25. Well worth it, looked better than it ever had. I just treated the faded black plastic trim.

splendid, ta. I’ll take it for the top notch clean at a local place then and leave it at that.

What is it? How much? FSH?

Thought I’d ask before Hora does.

I’m not interested BTW.

It was fine when I sold it to you Jon 🙂 The local hand wash is brilliant here; £40 and they spend about two hours doing all that tedious tyre blacking etc nonsense. Or mobile valeters are about twice that. As Timber says tho, if you’re px-ing, unless it has something catastrophically wrong, garage probably won’t care.

They didn’t on my x-trail when I traded it. Didn’t even look at it really. Turned up to pick up my new car and parked it as far away as I could 😉

If it’s an old car and you’re buying from a main dealer then the chances are they’ll just give you a standard price and fob off to another trader for putting through the auctions, so you might not get a better price at all for cleaning it up, though you’re always better to do so just in case. I can’t imagine it will influence their offer price much if at all. +1 for getting it washed by your local Polish chaps for a fiver or so. My local chaps do a better job than I can be bothered to invest time in achieving for a fiver (or £7 including the interior) in a fraction of the time. Once I even turned up post ride with my muddy mountain bike on the roof and they even jet washed that for me for mo extra charge, it got a good air drying on the drive home leaving me to just re-lube it when I got home.

It’s a Honda Accord, Harry 😉
It has been absolutely brilliant since Alex up there sold it to me. Best car I’ve ever owned. Utterly reliable, so comfy, awesome on the motorways, fantastic mpg. As I’ve mentioned on other threads, I’d get another one but bizarrely, they seem to hold their prices as well as similarly aged beemers and audi’s now. News of their reliability has clearly got out.
Low mileage though on account of me cycling to work most of the time. 91000 for a 9 year old car seems pretty good.

The estate? Mine (a tourer) is a 54 plate on 79000 miles. Good cars! Out of intrest what are you getting PX wise for it?

Mine is just the saloon, 05. No idea what I’ll get for it yet, if they offer £2k I’ll take it. Parkers says £2350.