rbaron

I'm browsing 3-4 year old CS inventory on Autotrader and Bestride.com. I see a lot of cars that, per Carfax, were purchased by the listing dealer at auction. I'm wondering if there is a way to calculate what the listing dealer paid for the car at auction. For example, if I see a 2012 CS listed for $42,000 did it probably go at auction for half that? For 75% of that? Or is there any way to tell?

mtnrat

I used to be in the car business in another life. We never bought cars at auction. We sold trade ins we were not comfortable selling to the public. My main job was scouring the classified to find private sales that we could buy for less than retail price. We would only buy the "right" cars with the "right" options, in the "right" colors, with low miles.
So from my experience there is a reason a car is in a auction setting, and it usually is not a good one.
Oh and on price. It doesn't matter what the auction price was, a dealer will set the price at the highest they think they can get, (with negotiation/trad in room), in the current market.

endless_corners

Low dealer trade in values will get you close to wholesale/auction prices.

Wisconsin Joe

^This.

If you want a good guess what auction price would be, find out what a dealer would offer for a trade on it. Especially if it's a car they aren't going to want to sell themselves.

There was a thread a month or so ago (maybe) about an older CTT. Owner was offered $9k on the trade and offered it for sale for that. There was a bunch of back and forth about the "price being that low for a reason", implying issues with the car. The reality was (probably) that the dealer was going to dump it to auction and was only offering what he expected to get back for it. Lots of new car dealers have pretty solid limits on what they will sell as used (age and mileage).

A friend recently got a used pickup for a really low price. His G/F works at the dealer and they took it in on trade. It was too old and too many miles for them to want to put on their lot, so the trade price was low. They were just going to dump it to auction, but he had the opportunity to get it for the price they paid. Which was about 2/3 of dealer book.

Chaos

2/3 is what I've been told by car people

endless_corners

Ultimately when/if I finance a vehicle. I consider myself "upside-down" if the amount being financed is more than low trade in values. I personally think auction/wholesale prices are the real value of the car.

Chances are if I ever want to sell my car it's going to be because I'm itchy and impatient to get something else or in a bad spot... In both instances I'm likely stuck taking "tradein" price as time will be limited. Obviously all this pseudo-logic is for weirdos like me who finance cars and don't just pay cash for things.

v10rick

Plug the vehicle info into...
webuyanycar.com
their offer is close to the current auction price. They do not sell to the public, the cars are wholesaled to dealers.

As mentioned above I would never purchase a brand X car sent to auction by a brand X dealer.
The reason...I spotted a current model BMW X5 on the back lot of a BMW dealer. It appeared to be in excellent condition but when I spoke to the sales manager he said it had problems that are too expensive to fix. He commented that problem cars are always sent to auction.

jpru2001

a dealer friend of mine told me that there are SOME cars at auction that are fine. for instance, he has a Toyota dealership. if he takes a porsche or audi or something like that in for trade, he offers a low trade in value for it and then auctions it, because he doesn't like to have multiple used luxury cars on his lot that compete with a brand new toyota. conversely, a luxury car dealer will take a honda or toyota as a trade, give a low value, and then immediately auction it because he is not interested in $10,000 cars sitting on his lot. so just because its an auction car doesn't mean there is absolutely something wrong with it. but in general it means a dealer couldn't sell it for retail on their lot, yes.

endless_corners

Pretty much any car 2007-2008 and older and more than 100k miles is not going to sit on a dealer lot.

rbaron

You all make good points. I'm the original owner of a very well equipped 04 CS with only 83K miles and I can't imagine the local Porsche dealer putting it on their lot were I to trade it in.