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Do’s and don’ts of getting rid of your old car

Published on December 7th, 2020
  Written by 
Bill Tsouvalas
Bill Tsouvalas is the managing director and a key company spokesperson at Savvy. As a personal finance expert, he often shares his insights on a range of topics, being featured on leading news outlets including News Corp publications such as the Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun, Fairfax Media publications such as the Australian Financial Review, the Seven Network and more. Bill has over 15 years of experience working in the finance industry and founded Savvy in 2010 with a vision to provide affordable and accessible finance options to all Australians. He has built Savvy from a small asset finance brokerage into a financial comparison website which now attracts close to 2 million Aussies per year and was included in the BRW’s Fast 100 in 2015 as one of the fastest-growing companies in the country. He’s passionate about helping Australians make financially savvy decisions and reviews content across the brand to ensure its accuracy. You can follow Bill on LinkedIn.
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When is scrapping the best option for your car?

As mentioned earlier, when the car is quite old and fixing it does not make much sense anymore, maybe you should start thinking about scrapping it. Also, when it starts to blow out smoke, this is exactly the kind of thought that should be running through your mind.

If you are considering selling your car, you should know that you will need a safety certificate. The inspection might reveal some issues that cannot be fixed or whose fixing might require high amounts of money. If your car needs a lot of repairing or if the process of fixing it requires huge amounts of money, you should take into consideration the possibility of sending it to the scrapyard.

For how much money can you scrap your car?

This is a question whose answer depends on the model of your car, but usually you should expect getting a fraction of the amount of money you would get by selling it. Why? Because you are making a trade. You are trading the selling process which can take a lot of your time with the convenience of getting rid of the problem.

Usually, the larger the car is, the greater amount of money you will get from the car scrappers. On the same note, if you manage to take it to the scrapyard on its own wheels, then you might also ask for a higher price.

If your car is in total damage, you are most likely not going to get any money out of it due to the fact that towing it will exceed the value for the scrap metal.

Remember that the scrappers are usually hard to bargain with and the price that you will get for your car will be around their initial offer, most of the times.

Getting more money for your car

You also have the possibility to sell your car in parts, but this operation will probably take longer than simply sending it to the scrapyard. This whole process will mean that you will have to handle separate transactions, for each part of the car. You can do that by setting a competitive price from the very beginning. Then, when you decide that most of the parts that could be taken advantage of have been sold, you can send the car – or at least its remains – to scrapping.

The better the condition of your car, the more money you are going to get out of it. If the condition of the car is great, you can even get it to a dealership and trade it with some other car.

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