[Anonymous]

Hi all. I’m seeking a little advice. A little over a year ago, I bought a 1984 Corvette for $6,000 (paid half with cash and financed half). At the time I bought it, I was living at home with my parents so my financial situation was much different then. For the better part of the last year, I moved out from my parents’ house and lived with a roommate. In May of this year, I finally got my own place (roommate situation didn’t work out for me). Now that I have my own place, things are a bit tighter financially and my financial priorities have changed. I’m currently renting, and I’d like to own a home when my student loans are paid off in 5-7 years. There’s not much I can do to change my current income and bills. Most of my bills like student loans, gas, groceries, etc. are pretty static. I’m spending about $200 a month between the monthly Corvette payment and the garage I have to rent. As long as I don’t own a house with a garage, that garage payment never goes away.

I’ve had the Corvette listed for about a month now with no serious leads. I came close to selling over the weekend, but the guy backed out. I have serious doubts of being able to sell this thing to a private buyer. I talked to a couple dealers that specialize in buying and selling Corvettes, and they all said that the 1984 year is a tough sell. Not a lot of people want them. A few weeks ago, I took it a dealer who offered me $2,000 for it, which I thought was a complete low ball offer. Now that I start to think about it more, the $2,000 doesn’t sound like a terrible idea. As much as I’d hate to take a $4,000 hit on it, accepting $2,000 would allow me to pay off the remaining loan balance and allow me to save more money each month towards my financial goals. It’s better than not being able to sell it at all.

Am I crazy for even considering the $2,000 offer? Thanks for your help!

[greg2015]

Sometimes you just have to cut your losses and move on. At this point, it's not really relevent what you paid for it originally. The $2,000 offer may be the best offer you'll get. It sounds like you've already sold yourself on the idea.

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[Anonymous]

what else is pertinent to your situation? do you need a car? if you sell the vette, are you going to have to replace it with something else?

Greg is right, unfortunately what you originally paid for it is irrelevant, now all that matters is the best you can get for it. Check 3rd party car resellers as well (carmax?), try a few different dealers and see if one offers more. Private selling is tough, it takes a lot of time to do, and the car may very well further depreciate if you decide to spend the extra time to find a private buyer yourself.

[alboreland]

$200 a month for a car payment and garage isn't bad. Do you have to buy another car if you get rid of it? If so you will will still have a car bill.

How are maintanence costs and insurance? I know a Corvette owner and he has to pay $100 for a set of break lights.

[tmac01267]

where are you located and do you have any additional info on the car? $2,000 seems WAY too low for that car, I was thinking more in the ballpark of $2,500 if it's clean 🙂

[Anonymous]

I think the answer to this question would be dependent on what you think you could get for it if you held out for a private party. Let's say you think you could get $4000 selling private-party, but that it'd take 6 months to make the sale. Let's also pretend that the whole $200 is just interest and garage, no principal (I know this is ridiculous, probably a large portion is principal, but just for the sake of discussion). Given these facts, selling now, you'd save $1200 of monthly expense by selling now and loss $2000 of potential sale value, so you'd end up $800 behind in your financial goals 2 years from now selling to the dealer vs holding out for private-party. However, with this scenario, taking more than 10 months to sell private-party would make you end up losing money over selling to the dealership.

These are mostly random numbers that I used to illustrate the thought-process, but if you plug in your own best estimates, it may help you get an idea of your best course of action. If you're paying $125/mo principal and $75/mo between interest and garage, then the amount of time that you can wait while still coming out ahead is longer; if you only could get $2500 selling private-party, then the amount of time you could wait is reduced, etc. I don't know the value of an '85 Corvette, so this is just a numbers-only approach without the data to back it up.

P. S. You might want to try listing on eBay as well – I saw a couple '84 Vettes with bids for more than $2000, but don't know the details of yours to know if they were comparable or not.

[MaLoTu]

If you sell it yourself you can probably get closer to $4000, which is what the dealer is going to sell it for (if not more). Sometimes it just takes a little more time to find the right buyer. What sources are you using to advertise it?

[acamp]

As mentioned above, check eBay, especially search sold listings so you can get an idea of market comps.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/Corvette-/6168/i.html?clk_rvr_id=886165647677&mfe=search&_vxp=mtr&_nkw=1984%20corvette&_dcat=6168&rt=nc&LH_AllListings=1&LH_PrefLoc=98&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1

I would join every car forum you can think of; local and national corvette forums, GM forums, performance forums, etc. Some have restrictions on new members posting in their classifieds, but worth a shot. Post on Craigslist of course (free) and maybe consider autotrader (but I would see how many other 80s Corvette's are on their site).

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[Anonymous]

@greg2015: I'm pretty much in the “cut my losses” mentality. I had fun with the car for the nearly 1.5 years that I've had it. The important thing to me is the $2,000 offer will pay off the entire loan balance, allowing me to start saving towards my goals immediately.

@DanVerona89: The Corvette is not my daily commuter. It's just an evening/weekend cruise car. I have a Hyundai that I drive regularly. I've had a few private buyers that expressed interest, but all of them went by the wayside. That plus the fact that the car will depreciate the more I hold on to it as well as the fact that the year Corvette I have doesn't draw a lot of demand makes me think that now is the best time to sell. As we get into the fall and winter months (I am on the east coast), it will be harder to sell and the price I will be able to sell it at will go down. I did take it to a Carmax, and they only offered $1,200. It's not really the type of car they would sell on their lots they claimed.

@alboreland: The Corvette is not my daily commuter. It's just an evening/weekend cruise car. I have a Hyundai that I drive regularly. For maintenance, the only maintenance I've done with it was put in a new battery. Besides inspection and registration, there haven't been any costs. It's in really good shape. Also, insurance is $360 per year for an annual policy (the insurance company treats it as a classic car so the premium isn't as high).

@tmac01267: If you do a search on Cars.com for used Corvettes in the 17601 zip code, you'll see mine listed. It's the blue one with 91,812 miles. If you do a Craigslist search for 1984 Corvette in Lancaster, PA (17601), you should be able to find it there as well. Craigslist has more detailed pictures. Cars.com limits the amount of pictures you can have unless you keep paying. If you want to make a reasonable offer, maybe we can talk haha.

@Lilla: I did not even consider eBay. That might not be a bad idea! There's just so many variables to consider in a situation like this.

@MaLoTu: I have it listed on Cars.com and Craiglist right now. I currently have it listed at $5,000. 1984 Corvettes just aren't that coveted among Corvette owners. I think it's a great car, but I've spoken to a couple dealers that specialize in buying and selling Corvettes and they said that the 1984 model year is particularly a tough sell. There's just not a strong demand.

@acamp: I think I'm going to definitely give eBay a shot. It looks like people are placing a lot of bids well above $2,000 for Corvettes similar to mine. I do have ads on Cars.com and Craigslist. Autotrader was pretty ridiculous with their fees, so I didn't post on there.

Thanks everybody so far everyone for your responses!

[travdivs]

Id say you could probably get more than $2000 but the dealer is right. Its pretty widely regarded that the 1984 Corvette and most of the 80's Corvettes were some of the worst, most under powered corvettes of all time. That likely explains why you're having a hard time selling it, there just isnt a huge demand for those. That said, take some time and explore posting ads online and maybe ebay. Good luck!

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[Tscape16]

Sorry in advance for being harsh. The fourth generation Corvette's aren't worth much until the LT1 years or special production vehicles. You got hosed buying that car for $6,000, you could have bought a nice early year LS1 Corvette (fifth generation) for that money. The dealer is probably being pretty generous giving $2,000 since they'll most likely send it straight to auction. First year runs of a new model are always the worst in terms of reliability, performance, etc. Sorry for your financial loss.

Side Note: Its amazing how far the track-capabilities of the modern car has come in such a short time. You should check out

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[KeepUPosted]

Seriously, you can find a C5 for $6,000 these days?! Wow, the Corvette market must be rough now…..

Yeah, unfortunately '84 was not the best year. First year of the C4, but was also the only C4 year with the not-so-great L83 Crossfire engine (carried over from the C3), and had the unreliable 4+3 manual transmission. Also pre-'90 C4 Corvettes had a subpar interior…..including that instrument cluster that tends to fade over time.

If it's a manual tranny, and a popular color (like red or black), you may be able to get $4K for it if you wait. But, if you need the money sooner than later, than it isn't necessarily unwise to just cut your losses and sell now. Most of us eventually run into those situations in life where we just have to accept that we need to unload an asset for a loss. I had to sell a house for a $20K loss several years ago when I had to move for a new job….and I even bought the house as a foreclosure in 2010! Renting the house out just wasn't worth it. At least your situation isn't as bad as mine was…..

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