Date:         Sun, 12 May 1996 10:06:07 -0700
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         jwakefield@4dmg.net (john wakefield)
Subject:      Re: What is fair continued

Scott,

  Borrow this machine one more time to take it to your local VW 
Dealership's shop for an estimate on each defect you and they can find.  
This will give to you a high-ball estimate (and bargaining tool) of what 
putting it on the NADA price book charts will require.  This is not 
reinventing the wheel, it's what they suggest. Then you can look up this 
machine in your regional current month's edition of the NADA book and 
find the milage add-on/milage-deduction chart for that class of machine, 
and compute the Retail Price, and Trade-in Price based on condition.  
Forget about the Loan Value Price.
  
  Now, the Retail Price is the maximum anyone should ever pay for 
anything, and you shouldn't even consider it.  The Trade-in Price is a 
reasonable approximation of what a dealer might hope to get if he runs it 
through the dealer auction, and that's before paying the auction company 
for their cut of the action.

  These vehicles sell well in some markets and not in others, so it's not 
like a used Honda Accord.  This means that bargains are available and a 
persistant potential buyer will find great deals if he/she is patient.  
If this seller doesn't want to let it go for close to Trade-in, make 
a low-ball offer with your phone number on a piece of paper stating 
that THIS IS A ONE DAY OFFER ONLY, then keep looking.  This WILL get 
their attention, and they'll hate it.  It's a buyer's market, not a 
seller's market in slow moving RV vans.

  Finally, you can access the latest NADA book at your local lending 
institutions or public library.  Ask your bank's loan officer 
representitive for a copy of the last edition.  This way you'll have the 
nearly current book in hand to study how to decode those milage/conditon 
charts.
 
  Hope this helps.  Dealers just love dealing with the uninformed.  Don't 
make their day!

  Good Luck
  John Wakefield 

Newland wrote:
  "Ok, I finally drove the 1989 Westfalia GL with 115k miles.  Some of
the things wrong with it are: .   .   .   .   .   . HELP!!"