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Preparing a Used Car for Sale

Lessons from home selling apply to prepping a car for sale. Make cosmetic improvements to give it street appeal. Get it checked out mechanically before a customer knocks on your door. Clean it over the course of a couple of days.

Start Selling Your Used Car Early

Keith's Used Cars Blog

A Free Service for Checking a Used Car’s History

Thursday July 3, 2008

It’s even easier (and free to boot) to learn more about a used car’s history – especially if it’s been flooded. The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) has created a new Web-based service with total-loss data for consumers called VINCheck.

NICB's VINCheck is a service provided to the public to assist in determining if a vehicle has been reported as stolen, but not recovered, or has been reported as a previously declared total loss vehicle by cooperating NICB members. To perform a search a Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) is required. A maximum of 5 VINCheck searches can be conducted within a 24-hour period.

“This is a step in the right direction, but because the information is limited, we still need federal legislation that would expand total-loss disclosure,” said Ivette Rivera, National Automobile Dealers Association’s executive director of legislative affairs, in a news release promoting the new website. “We would like all insurers and rental car companies to leverage existing technology, such as vehicle history reports, to keep dangerous, rebuilt cars and trucks off the road to truly protect consumers.”

Image © NICB

A Tool That Track Gas Guzzler Trade-ins

Tuesday July 1, 2008

Edmunds.com has made it easy to determine if it makes sense for you to trade in your gas guzzling SUV for a more fuel-efficient vehicle. It has created the Gas Guzzler Trade-in Calculator that helps determine the pay-back period and fuel savings associated with trading-in a fuel-thirsty vehicle for a fuel sipper.

Instinctively, it would seem to make sense to trade in, for example, a 2002 Ford Explorer fully loaded with a 4.0-liter V8 for a 2005 Honda Accord with a 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine. The calculator, though, shows it will take 68 months to make up the savings in fuel economy.

It’s an easy tool to use and does all the work for you. It doesn’t give you precise trade-in figures, but the numbers are pretty close.

Check out my in-depth research on fuel efficient vehicles for all budgets before beginning your search.

Top photo © GM/Bottom photo © Honda

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