Lisa Ross

Hello, I am assisting in the sale of my uncle's 1997 Camaro Z28. It's white and is a 1997. It has all leather interior gray, 6 speed manual, low miles at 99K. The car has no modifications and is original. it doesn't have any dents at all it's super clean. It has a few nicks in the paint and chips but barely. we rated it at " good condition " vs excellent on KBB as the interior is all leather but has a large rip in the drivers seat, A crack in the dash on the driver side, and one T-TOP leaks when you take it through the car wash. Rain doesn't effect the leak. it has nice new tires we just put on that are nice, and no mechanical issues at all. It runs great and looks pretty good. I do have photo's of it if needed. the stereo is upgraded big time, thousands of dollars worth of equipment. other than that it's stock. the title says, Lemon law on it or something to that nature. I am not sure what this means and if it matters to a BUYER ?. I need to see the tittle and research what that means or does anyone know? I am trying to figure out the blue book on this vehicle. So far it looks like the high Kelly blue book is 3875.00 for Good condition. However my uncle wants to list it at 4750.00 I am wondering if that's to high or possibly to low as his phone is blowing up. how do these cars resale? we don't want to over price it but we also don't want to under price it so any help would be appreciated. Thank you for your time, I attached the add I did with photo's hopefully you can see them. If not i will re post them. Lisa

Lisa Ross

wow 79 reads and not one response? okay thank you!

Mappinsj

5 grand is a good price, if clean. But expect less money this time of year

2JAWZ

iTrader: (1)

99K and no mechanical issues,,, Id do a professional detail and put 6K on it and go from there*

NC01TA

People generally don't like to comment when the news is not good. An LT1 car with basically 100,000 miles on it, that has a bad title yet, isn't going to fetch much. KBB pricing is 'spot on' in this instance in the $3,000 area. Of course there is no harm in asking more, just don't expect it.

2JAWZ

iTrader: (1)

^^well then break this news to the LS owners in the classifieds listing 180,000 mile cars for 7K*

Mappinsj

I did, and got yelled at for it

2JAWZ

iTrader: (1)

KBB is of no value to a real car guy anyway. we know what we are looking at and what the expected value should be on any particular vehicle. and every man with sense knows you start high and work it down,,damn***

Firebrian

85-90% of the LS-1's out there being offered for sale by both dealer and private parties have high numbers on them. Toss those out right from the start. Look at the bottom 15% of the pricing to get an idea of what they're probably really worth for that model, year, and mileage. Just because 90% of sellers are dreamers, doesn't make it accurate. Starting unrealistically high only makes a car stale and harder to sell. Most buyers don't want to buy a car that's been on the market for 6-12 months or longer and had several price drops. They can only assume something is wrong with it...and move on to another car fresh to the market. I'd rather be the first to see a car advertised for 1-2 weeks and priced pretty right (ie the seller knows what it's truly worth and isn't out to play games and waste everyone's time). Starting high in these cars is usually a recipe for ending up getting less than you should....unless it's particularly special like an anniversary WS6 LS-1 or SOM car. At least that's my take. There are too many decent cars out there for sale....so, you want yours to stand out as being pricing right, not for being priced stupidly like the other 85%.

KBB can be a very accurate price guide, though only for specific LS-1's within a specific mileage range. The lower the mileage, the more inaccurate they tend to become. At 100K miles or more, they aren't all that far off. I refer to KBB quite often. 6 years ago I sold my 1998 Z28 LS-1 with 115K two owner miles for $3K on a trade-in. Very clean car too with no interior rips and no real exterior flaws. Paint was excellent. The dealer offered it for $3800.

Using KBB I get $3977 for private party VG condition on your car. KBB doesn't give any additional value for an M6 manual trans, which is wrong. So if that's still working well I'd figure at least another $500 for the M6....maybe up to $800-$1,000. Asking for $4,750 is not that far off for a "clean" car, especially only 1-2 owner....the stereo upgrade doesn't hurt any. Just be ready to accept something in the $3K to $4K range. The kicker here is that if this car had so many issues early on that it was labeled a "lemon law" car, it might fetch way less. Buyers might be expecting a bargain, or they'll just pass.

RPM WS6

iTrader: (3)

This section is specifically for opinions/feedback on value and pricing, the classifieds are not a place to hassle sellers about their listed price or offer your opinion as an uninterested bystander. If their price is too high then their cars simply won't sell. People asking for input in this section are obviously open to opinions otherwise they wouldn't be posting in this section, so price discussion/advice is welcome here (and frankly the whole point of this section.)

I agree. Too many dreamers out there, and too many people thinking they have a "mint" car when in reality it's just average and should be priced accordingly. I also disregard vastly overpriced cars simply because I don't want to deal with the [apparently] unreasonable seller who thinks his car is really worth that much. Maybe he genuinely doesn't know any better, maybe he'd be open to a much lower offer without a huge argument, but it's not worth my time to take this gamble and potentially be called a "low baller" for offering a fair price on a car that's wildly overpriced. I see ads like this on Craigslist all the time, $6000 cars that are listed for $10k with a note stating "I know what I have, don't waste my time with low ball offers." Actually, they don't know what they have, they are simply dreamers, and these cars/ads stick around forever while the owner apparently keeps his head in the clouds. Guess they didn't really want to sell after all.

As you stated, if they are actually serious about selling then the price will eventually come down to something realistic, but in the mean time several potential buyers may have already moved on and/or lost interest for the reasons you've stated. It's understandable to list a car on the high side of reasonable, expecting some negotiation, but I won't even bother contacting those pie-in-the-sky sellers who think they are sitting on a gold mine when in reality it's a pyrite mine. Worse yet are the sellers who list their car as "mint/perfect" and then you see a bunch of obvious flaws even in the small, low quality pictures - imagine how much worse it will be in person! People don't understand that a truly "mint" car is one that doesn't see public roadways, that is transported on a trailer from event to event and is classified among the finest examples in the world. An original 50k mile, 15 year old car might be excellent, exceptional even, but it's NOT mint.

Sorry for the rant, I've lately been frustrated with some poorly described cars.

As for the OP's car (99k mile '97 Z28), the car seems to have several condition issues (cracked dash, torn seat, various paint chips) plus the title concerns. I would place it on the low or lower mid-range side of typical value for M6 '97 Z28s. If not for the title issue it would probably fall in the average/mid-range for this type of car (most will have some issues with 100k miles and 19 years of age.)

2JAWZ

iTrader: (1)

I have never expressed anything to a seller of a car here. If its high priced its just a joke. They should have a "unreasonable" section in the classifieds for such laughs.

Cajun ELESS-ONE

go on craigslist and search for lt1 fbodies for sale in your area. and base your selling price from that. you may be surprised. some areas of the country sell our cars for more. some sell for less. i looked recently in my area. saw a 1996 6speed with a 12 bolt and rebuilt motor going for 12k. i paid 5500 for my 95 with 59k miles on it. it has 70k on it now with several good mods. i considered selling mine for 10k lol. might be worth a shot.

i think you could ask no more then 6k for yours. people will always low ball you ad you can meet at a more reasonable price of say 5200 or whatever yall agree on

2JAWZ

iTrader: (1)

^exactly

RPM WS6

iTrader: (3)

Listing prices on Craigslist don't really provide confirmed indication of sale prices/true market value. Ebay is a bit more handy as you can see some actual bidding/sale data.

If you're going to use Craigslist as a price guide, you'll have to watch for a while and see which ads disappear vs. the ones that keep getting bumped and never seem to sell. You can pretty quickly identify the dreamers and avoid making the same mistake of wildly overpricing.

Bandits96ss

Not to burst anyones bubble but I personally have been trying to sell a 1996 Camaro SS with 82K miles in the $5000-$6000 so just to comparatively speak a Z-Vert I would not really put in the same ball park. Good luck with your sale but I honestly think you would have to be more around the $3500-$4000 price range to start off with and even at that it would be a hard sale. No one seems to want this junk

Edit: I did see you said you were getting calls on the $4750 price so I would say if you can actually make a sale around that you would be doing well.