Trade in value for your cobalt?
 

I would say about a week ago there was a clean low miles 2002 SS camaro that arrived at one of my local dealerships. I have been thinking about getting into another RWD V8 for a few months and thought i would go and take a look at it and figure out what they would give me for my car. So currently im sitting at 119k and the car is clean, doesn't leak a drop. When i arrived the sale person even commented that he hasn't seen one of these this well taken care of and that they usually come in all beat to hell. So i go through the process for them to take it to the back and look it over. They came back and told me that the most they would give me is $4000 for the car. So my question to you guys is, what have you gotten for your cobalts when you traded them in? I bought this car from a dealer for $10,000 4 years ago and that was close to what the value was on KBB. Has the value of the SS really dropped that much? I feel like this quote is basically the trade in value for a base model cobalt.

Dealerships will always lowball you down to 30% to what they believe they could sell it. If you really want to sell, do it privately.

Which cobalt is it? LNF or LSJ? 4k for an LSJ is a good trade in, for an LNF you could likely sell it private party for 6-8k.

You have to think of how difficult it'd be to sell an old sports coupe known to be owned by young people.

There is zero collector value. To everyone besides this forum our cars have zero desirability either.

For trade in it sounds about right with the miles

Its an 09 LNF. Guess i should have said that.

The annoying thing is the manager telling me how he wanted the car on the lot. Even went as far as calling me 2 more times trying to get the car.

My last vehicle i traded in they gave me over the value to pay off what i owed and put me in another vehicle i was hoping it would be the same here. Im betting they would be listing this for around 10k. I know they need to make a profit but damn. Ill have it paid off in a year or 2 so i will just have to wait and sell it private party.

The trade in might be a little low, but you have to remember they list it for 10k and expect to get talked down to 8k. Keeping a dealership open isnt cheap.

Try to sell it private party.

Margins on small cars are tight. Even on new cars.

Friend started selling used cars last year and tends to stick to trucks and SUVs.

Yup, and it's almost a 10yr old car without all the fancy bells and whistles every consumer apparently wants...

I got quoted 4500 for my LNF trade in in 2015. and it was in decent condition.

My biggest surprise is that fact that the KBB value has tanked so much in just 3 years. I mean these arent the most well known cars but damn thats a steep curve

Back up cameras are now standard. People just expect more from cheap cars now.

Plus the market is pushing new cars. Financing is cheap or even "free".

Ford announced in the next couple years that they will only build mustangs and focus. All other cars will go away because everyone wants trucks and crossovers.
When we got our Acadia they only wanted to give us $8000 trad in on the wife's 5 year old regal that had 57000 miles and was spotless. I got $5,000 more on my 7 year old Dakota that had 20,000 more miles.

Pretty much just the Mustang. I don't know why they even consider the Focus Active a car.

And what's gonna happen when gas goes back to $4.00?

I would guess the same thing that happened back in the late 2000's, probably create a whole bunch of small hybrid/eco cars and run another cash for clunker type deal.

To be fair, if your typical driver doesn't continually hammer the throttle, the larger vehicles can get ok mileage.

Granted I believe they're trying to corner the market and hopeful that gas prices skyrocket and people are stuck with the large vehicles. They probably get kick backs from the oil companies. It's not unheard of that car companies collaborate with the oil companies to squeeze more money out of the consumer.

The cycle continues.

91 is around 320-350 a gallon around here. luckily the brobalt gets decent gas mileage.

I'm getting 20-22 mpg I go thru a tank of gas a week it's getting expensive lol

You're a lead foot Eddie.

I get 26-28 mpg in my stock LSJ

I get 13 in my STi on E85 lol. but its only $2 a gallon.

Nah I hardly even go WOT wont really do anything much that 5psi boost and that's because I go thru the mountain and I have to keep up with my speed

Let's de-tune it so you can run 89 :lol: (for those folks at low altitude, it's like 91, the decreased air mass drops the octane requirement by about 2 points)