How To Sell Your Car for More Than It’s Worth
Hill
1977
Not a bad book for the times. The advice is pretty basic and sensible from what I can see. Advice on cleaning, detailing and minor repairs is probably still relevant but selling cars on your own is quite different with the advent of the Internet. I kept thinking that no amount of help from this book would be able to get you anything on some of the those spectacular examples of automotive design, such as the AMC Pacer, Chevy Vega and the Ford Pinto. One of my pals from college had a “lovely” Ford Pinto that was on its last legs and she insisted it was not going to explode. I think this particular car died sometime around 1983 and is probably a hunk of rust in a landfill in central Illinois.
Mary
PS. This led to a discussion of the worst cars at my house and I stumbled on this Time Magazine article from 2007 if you have a need to relive some of the more awful moments in auto history.
I looked at that Time article on the greatest lemons of all time and saw the page on the Zunndapp Janus (the little bitty German car with the rear-facing back seat). Hmmm, isn’t Zunndapp the name of one of the villains in Cars 2 ? Whoever writes those Cars movies not only has a heckuva sense of humor but knows a #2-ton about automobiles !
On the subject of itty-bitty Euro-cars, one time I pulled into a parking lot on the way back to the office and parked next to a Puch, another car that like the Zunndapp was made by a motorcycle company. OMG, I’m like, if this car were any smaller I could pick it up and tuck it into my purse! I don’t know if it was a lemon but it was sure barely bigger than a kumquat !
Hey, they forgot the Austin Allegro!
I rear-ended a small car once long ago and nearly lost it thinking it was going to explode. That was a low point in automotive history.
Helped along in part, no doubt, by the hit shows of the era, “CHiPs” and “Emergency! One”, where every car ever involved in an accident was required to explode dramatically………
Isn’t the premise of this book essentially fraud?
It should come with a second book: 101 Fun Things To Do While In Jail.
I think my dad once bought a car “prepped” for sale based on this book. He was a very non-mechanical genius… turns out the carburetor was built with parts from three different carburetors, none of which was the correct one for this car, and a wad of steel wool had been stuffed up the tailpipe to keep the thick black smoke from pouring out. Sure smelled like a new car, though!
Just noticed this: The cover is “how to sell YOUR car” while the scanned pages are “how to sell A car”. Unprofessional publishing or subliminal suggestion? (: