Last summer my dad gave me the task of selling his 1983 Porsche 911. We had tried to sell it for several years but were unsuccessful. We tried Ebay, Facebook, and Craigslist and parked it in front of my dad’s office with a for sale sign. After years of no success my dad just told me he was busy and I just needed to get it done by the end of the summer.
My initial idea was to sell the car to another person from around the area that either saw the car in person or on Facebook or Craigslist. A few people showed up to look at it but no one bought it. I quickly realized that the potential market for this particular car in western Pennsylvania was pretty small.
I had to think about this from a different angle. I asked myself ”who would buy this car?” I decided to search “sell your Porsche” on Google. I found several companies in places like California and Florida that specialize in buying and restoring old Porsches and other classic cars. I decided to contact several of the companies and found that Auto Classic Trade based in Laguna Hills, California was interested in buying the car.
I communicated with restoration manager for a couple weeks working out the details of the sale. He wanted a lot of pictures of the car to see if it was a good investment for his company. We also negotiated on a selling price. I was able to convince him to buy it for $17,500 when my dad had bought the car eight years earlier for only $13,000 (I didn’t tell him that). He wired the money to my dad’s account and a few days later a truck came by the Grove City exit on I-80 and picked it up. We now had $17,500 and an empty stall in the garage.
BoweryJE22
This really highlights the importance of knowing your market in sales. While you could have had some limited success on other platforms, dealing with a specific trader was definitely the right move.
Really great job of knowing who your target market was. You can try to sell a product all you want, but until you narrow down who that target is, then the sale will not be made! Great thinking and intuition and congrats on your sale 🙂
I really don’t know how you could bring yourself to sell a Porsche 911 but that’s beside the point. I think that this shows how the internet has impacted sales. Western Pennsylvania is a very limited market for high end sports cars and 15 years ago nobody ever would have dreamed they could get on their computer and in just a few searches, find a company all the way across the country to buy a car. I think this story also shows how valuable it is to know your market. Your dad was unsuccessful in trying to sell the car for several years, but, just by knowing your market, you were able to sell it in only a couple months for a good price.