Ask Jack: Lex Loofa?
“We buy year… then we buy mileage… then we buy condition.” That was a favorite axiom of the used-car appraiser at my old Ford dealership. What he meant was this: In the first few years of a car’s life, people will pay more money if it’s a bit newer than a similar model sitting right next to it. Once it’s about five years old, the conversation switches to mileage: you’d rather have a 2012 ECTO-300def with 75,000 miles than a 2014 model with 105,000.
Usually by the time a car reaches the decade mark, and certainly by the fifteenth anniversary, it’s all about condition, condition, condition. Are you in the market for an Eighties Porsche? Condition is king. Are you limited by fate and circumstance to something like a 2005 Ford Focus? Then it’s doubly true.
Which leads us to today’s episode of Ask Jack, in which the person doing the asking is… uh… me.
Hey, you handsome devil, let’s talk about that 2004 Lexus ES330 that our old pal John has for sale. He’s the original owner. It’s been in a garage its whole life. Looks brand-new despite 147,000 miles on the clock. Even the seats look new. The tires and brakes? You guessed it — they’re new as well. This car has always been maintained by the book. It’s virtually a new car, albeit one with enough mileage on the clock to blow a Subaru Legacy’s fourth set of head gaskets.
John went to trade this in on his new Acura ILX, but they only offered him $5,000. He think it’s worth $7,000. It would make a great commuter car for rainy days and Mondays. The problem is that cars of this age and mileage tend to go for $3,500 or so at all those corner lots. Is this even worth considering? Should we make him an offer in the $6,000 range? Or is it cheaper and better to just keep putting the mileage on other cars?
I don’t have any real desire for an ES330 in my life. But this is the very definition of creampuff and it’s likely to run another 100k without encountering any fatal difficulties. The problem I have is that there’s no way I will get my money out of it if I change my mind at any point in the next five years. The moment I buy it, this Loofa-scrubbed Lexus luxury car goes from a one-owner indoor-storage diamond to a two-owner, acid-rain-washed used Toyota.
If I put 50,000 miles on it and sell it for three grand, I’ve gotten those miles much more cheaply than I would if I put them on my 61,000-mile Accord coupe. But given that I’ve kept this Accord this long precisely because of its affordability compared to say, a Challenger T/A or even a lime-green Audi RS5, it seems stupid to get a cheap car to save my cheap car.
What say you, B&B? And if anybody here wants to pay John $7k for his perfect stone-grey ES330 with black interior (it’s not the car in the photo) then let me know and I’ll allow you to step in line ahead of me. The age of the car? Not great. The mileage? High. The condition? Out of this world.
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Based on some Craigslist browsing an ES330 in that age/mileage range is commonly available through private party sale in the Mid-Atlantic region at $4500-$6500. Getting a $5000 trade offer from a dealer is money in the bank and he should have taken the money and run. He'll be lucky to sell it within a few months on his own for anything more than the dealer offered not to mention dealing with the hassle.
He should have taken the $5k trade. It would have reduced the tax burden on his new car purchase which would have helped close the gap between the trade value and his perceived value. Then he wouldn't have to carry this and deal with the inevitable Craigslist nightmare. Why Jack would want this when he has an Accord coupe, I'm not sure. Another vehicle on the policy, another parking spot lost.