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Posted by: windforfun Jul 13 2022, 05:04 PM

My car is pristine & 99% stock with only 49K miles. I sent these guys some pics just for the hell of it. Their verbal offer was really sad. These guys are typical horse traders.

And at my age:

Posted by: windforfun Jul 13 2022, 05:05 PM

Almost pristine.

Posted by: mepstein Jul 13 2022, 05:31 PM

When I sold real estate, investors bought at 2/3 of retail.

Posted by: worn Jul 13 2022, 07:55 PM

When I read about those gentlemen it is usually a story about a car that is about to break in two. Which rules your car totally out.

Posted by: r_towle Jul 13 2022, 07:56 PM

What are you selling?

Posted by: windforfun Jul 13 2022, 08:03 PM

The 914 is too sweet to sell. You know, you have to see it & drive it to love it.

Posted by: rhodyguy Jul 14 2022, 07:35 AM

How low was the pitch?

Posted by: Freezin 914 Jul 14 2022, 08:06 AM

I know this will sound crazy, but I have sold BHCC 2 cars. Both times were very easy, an virtually painless.
Yes, they don’t want to pay top dollar, yes, they mark the car up quite a bit more than they pay. They also, pick them up, ship them across the country, which isn’t cheap.
One car was a project car, had some rust issues, but a car that should have been fixed. The other was my weekend driver. Very reliable, but was also a very nice project car that could be driven as it was fixed up.
In both circumstances, I personally didn’t want to have 200 phone calls and untold amount of texts, 10 test drives, then deal with, do they even have the money. Both times I had money in my account within an hour. The cars were picked up within 3 days of sale.
Do they sell some junk, YES! They do!
But with any sort of volume buyer/seller that is going to happen. I am sure they have a few good cars come through their hands as well. The buyers need to be educated and ask questions. But this is true with any vintage vehicle purchase, or they could get burned.
At the end of the day, the seller needs to be comfortable with the sale price. And the buyer if a retailer, needs to make money or they won’t stay in business. For me, it was a bit less money. For the trade off of less questions, less time for sale, no test drives, less pictures/videos sent, etc.
Anyone trying to sell to a dealer, most likely is not going to get the same money as they would selling to a collector/ enthusiast. If the car is an excellent example, there are definitely better avenues to take other than BHCC.
My .02 cents.

Posted by: Unobtanium-inc Jul 14 2022, 09:21 AM

Why sell to a dealer? I get that question a lot.

Most of the people who sell to me do it because they want a combination of Peace of Mind, privacy, and speed. What does that mean?

It means you will paid quickly and the funds are available.
It means I won't take a million pictures of your other cars and post them all over the place. I also won't try and aggressively buy all your other cars.

But some dealers are better than others. Many start from the bottom and work their way up if they have to. This can be dangerous because once you piss a seller off it can be hard to recover, you've offended them and their car, more money might not close the deal. I prefer to come with a strong offer that is very close to the top dollar I will pay. As a result I usually get the car. Obviously I make money on it but maybe not always as much as the guy who starts at 50% of his highest offer. But what's 50% of nothing? Because that's what you have if you don't buy the car.

It also comes down to volume, when you call a high volume dealer like BHCC they just start as low as they can and probably don't really care if they buy the car or not.
You also didn't tell us what the car was, so it's hard to determine how sought after the car is.
But bottom line if you want top dollar you aren't going to get it from a high volume dealer, you'll have to put in the work yourself and yes it is work.

Posted by: NARP74 Jul 14 2022, 10:38 AM

What is the average margin a dealer is looking for?

Posted by: windforfun Jul 14 2022, 12:28 PM

Just a "73 1.7 in really great shape.

Posted by: windforfun Jul 14 2022, 12:28 PM

Less than half of what I was looking for.

Posted by: Dave_Darling Jul 15 2022, 07:15 PM

They probably would have paid more if the car was rusted in half. That seems to be their specialty...

--DD

Posted by: Tdskip Jul 16 2022, 06:52 AM

They have a very specific business model, which obviously works for them, so it is completely expected that you got a low offer.

Posted by: jim_hoyland Aug 7 2022, 06:37 AM

LA Times article today re BHCC:See:

https://enewspaper.latimes.com/desktop/latimes/default.aspx?pnum=16&edid=441310c9-da54-45f0-926b-4f7d8a074837