Selling my soul? Nope, just my car...

One of the most hated tasks I have ever done is selling a vehicle privately. Usually I trade my vehicles in when I purchase a new one however every now and then I sell one privately in an attempt to gain a little more value from it and yesterday I finally decided to get proactive and list my wife's vehicle online for sale. I did the usual thing: Took some photo's, wrote some engaging text and a list of features the vehicle has in a bid to entice the market to come and inspect it and listed it online.

As you may know, (if you follow my blog), I'm an outdoorsman, among other things, and love getting out and about so all my cars have to be capable of getting me there and back with a minimum of trouble and so I accessorise them fairly heavily. This particular vehicle was my wife's car however is still accessorised up heavily, in fact just as heavily as my Ford Ranger is currently.

You can see the list of additional equipment I have added to the car below over and above the standard vehicle. It's a lot! (About $25,000 worth of stuff went on over the 6 years I owned the car.)

TJM steel bullbar with fog lights
TJM 9500lb winch (brand new synthetic rope)
TJM under vehicle protection plates
TJM 2 inch suspension/lift kit
ARB classic canopy (lift up rear and side windows + roof vent)
ARB tub liner
ARB fridge slide (60L fridge not included)
Safari snorkel
Longranger 130L fuel tank (we get about 1200km range when not towing)
Heavy duty (Extreme Outback) clutch
2.5 inch exhaust system
Tow bar 3000kg
New tyres at 130,000km
105Ah auxiliary battery (tub mounted) + 50A anderson solar input plug and 12v accessories
Redarc BCDC charger next to aux. battery
Redarc Tow pro electric brake controller
Uniden RM770 80ch CB
6.6 gain long antenna (on fold down bracket) + short antenna for city use
Rhino rack awning (with sides)
Rhino rack roof bars
Rhino rack roof cage
Rhino rack long handled shovel brackets
Tinted windows
Reverse camera (rear view mirror style)
Narva 12 inch light bar on bullbar
Narva 12v plugs (2) in cabin (drives side)
Rear reversing light
50A plug on rear + 7 pin large round trailer plug
Air bags fitted to rear
Turbo catch-can has been fitted
Power windows and central locking
Air conditioning
Fire extinguisher

So, I hate the process of selling a car privately so much because it's simply annoying. The vehicle has to be kept in pristine condition at all times because someone may call to view it at any stage. This can be time consuming, and then when people call they sometimes don't turn up or are really late or early messing up my schedule. I also hate the thought of strangers coming to my home and seeing the car. I find it intrusive. Then there's the way people negotiate. They set up why they are going to offer some stupidly low price because they have to do this or that to the car were they to buy it...As if I'm going to pay for it for them by reducing the price I sell it for! They walk around it trying to find faults that aren't there or justifying how many other similar vehicles are out there competing with mine. "Go and buy one of them then, asshole!" is what I'm thinking however I know it's just them pretending to have very little interest to justify their eventual low offer. I am a professional negotiator and do it well so I just play the game and move on. It's annoying though, and I hate it.

Anyway, yesterday at 2pm I completed the advert, added 37 pictures and the text and hit the go button preparing myself for the onslaught of bullshit, idiot buyers or probably worse, no calls at all!

I'm travelling to the UK and Finland in a few weeks and will be gone for about 6 weeks and so I didn't want this vehicle sitting around very long. I priced it very attractively to get it sold quickly and to my great pleasure that's exactly what happened. I received a phone call within 30 minutes of the advert going live and the guy was here to look at it about 10 minutes later. (Coincidentally he lives in the same suburb as I do). About 40 minutes later we had agreed on a price (I was fairly brutal in respect of the price not reducing it by very much at all) and he paid me a $1,000 deposit. He'll be picking it up Monday afternoon after I have completed the paperwork removing my wife's custom registration plate from it and replacing it with a standard one.

The process made me pretty happy as it was fast and quite straightforward. It makes me think about the way we, as humans, have the ability to affect our own attitude. I had set up, in my mind, that the process would be difficult, time-consuming and annoying; That paradigm was fixed in my mind and before I even undertook the task I was feeling negative and actually a little grumpy about it. When the process rolled out so smoothly my attitude changed of course however it is when a person approaches a difficult, or unwelcome, task that attitude must be at it's peak. It is in those times that we need to be on-point and at the top of our game to be able to attack the task with passion and energy.

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good right now. I don't have to worry about where this (third) vehicle gets parked, no longer have to pay for maintenance, registration and insurance for it, can go away to the UK stress-free and I have a little more cash in my pocket as well. A good all-round result I think. I am also pleased that the vehicle is going to continue its life with a young family who intend to off-road it and go camping a lot. The vehicle has done a great job in getting my wife and I around the place as required and I know it will continue to chug-along nicely for its new owner. My wife will miss it, she already does, however she gets to drive my much newer and awesomely awesome Ranger now. She's pretty happy about that.

To be honest, she's not much of a car person and is happy with anything that is safe and reliable. My Ranger is both of those things plus awesomely awesome too. You can see her above with her old truck to the right, and with mine to the left. (Both taken in the Flinders Ranges. I feel better about her driving a newer vehicle full of safety features and she loves the way it drives admitting it's so much better than her car was. Last week she was using it to do the shopping and she had some guy come up to her and ask her about it in the carpark. She surprised him by being able to talk about all the accessories and stuff so I think she must have paid more attention to me when I explained it all than I initially thought! To be honest though, I think the guy was more interested in chatting her up and getting her phone number than learning about the truck; He didn't get her number and can drool over my truck all he likes. It's mine, not his.

It won't be long and I'll start building up my new Landcruiser 200 Series with some off-road accessories and so the process starts all over again. I look forward to getting it all done however now is a time of remembrance for our much-loved outgoing vehicle, my wife's 4x4, and to rejoice in the fact the sales process was smooth and fast! I love it when a plan comes together.

[- Design and create your ideal life, don’t live it by default -]