Car Sales in Life in General

I’m selling my Mazda tomorrow.

It’s actually really a sad moment for me. I bought that car brand new nearly 10 years ago. It got me through college, through my 4 years in Austin, back to Dallas, and then to Oklahoma, and then back again. I’ve washed/waxed it regularly, done all the maintenance myself, and did all the detailing. Minus one little ding on the rockerpanel from a recent dumb guy move (something I can explain later), it looks brand new. Maybe I just am looking past all of the flaws, but I love that car.

But it’s time to let it go. Jessica can’t drive a stick shift, and while I could teach her, she’d have to daily drive it for a while to get comfortable. And even then, she wouldn’t like driving it because it’s definitely not as smooth of a ride as her Hyundai.

I spent WAY too much time on the car prepping it for sale. My initial thought was I’d private sell the car for more money, versus taking it to a car lot. Things I did to the car include.

1. Buying tires for it. The tires were nearly done for, so I found some used Toyo tires on ebay for $180 and had em installed for $100. This was a good investment because every place I’ve taken the car to, the first thing they do is turn the front wheel and check the tire condition.

2. Paid a guy $350 to knock a few dents out, but unfortunately the worst dent was so bad that he spent all of the time just on the one. And he couldn’t even get it out all of the way, just about 60% or so. I secretly started questioning his abilities a bit but when he was wrapping up he decided to pop out one of my smaller dents and was done in 3 minutes… so that made me more confident in his skills. That one dent really was bad I guess.

3. Spent $200 on body work. Back in 2019 some dumb bitch backed into me in a parking lot and tried to blame me for it, saying I should have stopped. Nah girl, u backed out of your spot and didn’t bother looking. Both insurance companies sided with me but I never got it fixed (long story that involves her insurance screwing me). Fixing it properly would have involved bondo and paintwork, probably $1000-1200. So I found a shop (run by the nicest russian fellas u ever met) that pulled the fender out and line it back up with the bumper, no paint. It’s not perfect, but it’s like 85% better than it was, so I’m super happy with it!

4. Spent $60 dollars on a new trunk release switch and back up cam. The camera worked but occasionally glitched in hot weather so I felt bad just leaving it as-is. Also the trunk release button worked but the rubber covering was crusty and falling off so I just replaced it. Neither one was too difficult, knocked it out in an hour.

5. Replaced the serpentine belts. Honestly this was pretty easy as well, and I didn’t “technically” spend money for prepping the sale because I bought them years ago, just in case the old ones popped off while I was using the car (something I’ve had happen to me in the past). Took about 90 minutes.

6. Spent WAY too long going around the car fixing all of the paint chips. Mazda vehicles are notorious for thin paint, and mine was no exception. I have some high quality touch up paint but there was just so many of them. I made it look a lot better though.

7. Painted the bumper and front grill. Both were made of black plastic which was HORRIBLY faded from the sun. I’ve tried every single trim product out there to get black plastic restored, but none of them work. The only real fix is just to paint it, so I did. Didn’t take super long honestly, just a little bit of prepwork and I was done in about 2 hours with both!

1. The steering wheel needed some work, the little plastic logo had peeling plastic and the wheel rubber material was starting to disintegrate. I bought this little sticker thing to cover the logo and honestly it looks stock, so I was happy with that! The wheel though… took some work. Yeah I could have tossed some crappy steering wheel cover over it and called it a day, but I wanted to do a good fix so I bought this leather cover that you stitch on yourself. Honestly, I thought it would be easy but HOLY CRAP it took so long. Like 4 hours of work. Now I’ll say this, it looks freaking fantastic, so if I was keeping the car, that would have been worth it. But nah, never again haha. I’ll just pay someone to put it on.

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Anyway… basically I think I may have done all that work to stall so I wouldn’t have to sell haha. Kind of did some psycho-eval on myself to figure that one out. So I finally decided, enough is enough, I’ll take some nice photos of the car and post it.

Alright, so here’s the thing with this car, there are so few of them out there being sold currently that it’s really hard to put a price on it. And that basically comes down to one thing, it’s a stick shift. So few stick shift Mazda3’s out there. I was seeing prices all over the place, from as low as $7000 all the way to $14,000.

Now as a private seller, you can’t ask for the same money as a dealership. They have a name and reputation, so people feel more comfortable spending money with them versus just buying from some random dude one the internet. So I was thinking I’d aim for $10,000 which was on the lower end of what people were selling theirs in similar condition to mine. Honestly, it’s a very fair price.

But it’s been like 2 weeks and I’ve had nothing but scammers. Not a single serious buyer has even test driven this car. Now I considered lowering the asking price, but I figure “why not just take it to some dealerships and see what they’ll offer me?”

First place offers me “$6000”, and appraiser didn’t even know how to drive a stick. How can you buy in the industry of buying cars and you don’t’ drive stick? Also that offer? Sheesh. Needless to say I walked.

Second place offers $6500, a little better but still way less than what I’m looking for. Third place goes higher, $7000. Okay, no we’re getting somewhere. I was willing to drop down to $9000 private sale, so this getting closer. I still left because I figure I can just come back if I change my mind.

Finally, I take to a Mazda dealership. I’ve actually been to this dealer in the past for a software upgrade. The dude immediately starts saying things like “Well, it’s a base model, no sunroof…” etc etc just trying to soften me up for a lowball offer. But then, he notices it’s a 6 speed. I could immediately see him light up, he’s old school obviously and just loves the car. Takes it for a ride, loves it. Comes back and says “what do you want for it, realistically?” I say “$8500 and I’ll leave it here with you”.

Goes to talk to his boss, comes back and say “Listen I couldn’t get you 8500, but I got you 8000.” SOLD. I shook that man’s hand because I need this car out of my life otherwise I’m just keep tinkering with it until I decide to keep it haha. Plus I don’t have to deal with sketchy randos test driving it and making sure they register it immediately and/or calling me trying to get a refund. Tomorrow I’m signing paperwork and handing over the keys.

Only issue with this solution is roughly half of the stuff I did to the car to prep for sale was pointless, the car lot doesn’t car if the plastic is faded or if there are paint chips LOL. The tires and bodywork were def worth, but everything else? nah. Oh well, I still had some fun with it and learned a lot!

I’ll miss that car, and the 6 speed in it but it’s time to move on. I already have a new vehicle lined up but I’ve already made this entry way too long so I’m gonna end it here!