How do you price a _fully_ loaded '05 6MT?
04-06-2014, 09:55 AM
#1
How do you price a _fully_ loaded '05 6MT?
Okay, so I happened across my '05 almost 3 years ago after destroying my beloved 2002 6MT. After sitting in its painfully uncomfortable driver's seat for 40,000 miles (picked it up at 90K, now it has 132,000) I'm sick of this behemoth and want to switch to a lil' G37. My problem is that I have no idea how to price my car.
It's silver with the frost interior, including the elite package (4 heated bucket seats), navigation, satellite radio, and traction control. No limited slip, but when I bought it, it even had the factory chrome wheels! So it's literally optioned with everything that Nissan offered that year--heated seats, mirrors, and steering wheel, auto-dimming rearview and sideview mirrors, bi-xenon lamps, rear power sunshade, rear center console between the two rear buckets, Bose with 6 CD in-dash changer, blah blah blah.
I can't even find an SL with the elite package to see what they go for so I could have some idea of where mine should be priced. Heck, I've only ever seen one other elite package on the road. Some lady pulled in next to me at the dentist's one day. It brought a tear to my eye, seeing my car's twin. (only with that terrible slushbox, of course)
Why am I selling? Well, I have a huge list of reasons that total up to ~$3000 to get it factory fresh. Everything from dealing with the ABS issue that popped up yesterday (drove through some pooled water about 3/4 inches deep on a highway exit that I didn't see until I was practically in it on Friday during all that flooding around the country), to needing new front suspension (shocks starting to trickle oil), to needing a new transmission mount (replaced the other three, now the engine vibrates excessively at idle and sometime idles roughly, Googling suggests the engine being unhappy that 3/4 mounts are new and they aren't all equally worn out), to needing a new $90 seat cushion from Nissan so's it doesn't dominate your lower back on long drives (I think the previous owner was, uh, rather large), to those stupid, horrible HVAC vents needing to be replaced (again, 3/4 are broken. That's $125 from Courtesy), to the driver's side mirror vibrating at speed, to a piece of the passenger side mirror being held on with JB weld (backed into an 80-year old one-car garage spot, snagged the mirror. Was furious.), to the damage done to the rear bumper when my wife closed the garage door on it, to the damage done to the front bumper from putting on 80,000+ highway miles over its life, to the 30,000 mile old precat throwing a P0420 again, to the shifter's reverse lockout being broken (see previous remark about the fatty owner) and shifter bushings needing to be replaced, to the lovely cd player being only able to play CDs 1-4, and now it won't play when cold, and now it won't play when WARM but the road has bumps. The anti-skip feature seems dead.
Reading all that probably made you angry, but I swear I've treated this car like a second son. I religiously change the oil with M1 0W-40, I wax it to keep those wonderful sparkles in the paint sparklin' away in the summer sun, I hose it down everytime I drive through salt, I completely tore down the engine to replace the dreaded timing chain guide failure, replaced the clutch pedal when its bracket broke to stop the squeaking, replaced the brakes and spark plugs when most people would give you a funny look for being too proactive, I even ran E0 (yes! ethanol free!) gasoline in it last summer, just to reward it for being a blast to drive in the twisties. It's just had a few run ins with garages that bother me.
No one wants a stick-shift Maxima, save some people on the Org, so it pains me to turn my car in to a Carmax or the like, but it's worth so little and needs so much work... I can't even find a stick-shift '04-'06 on Craiglist within 500 miles of Louisville, according to my searches on searchtempest.com
PS: I blame America. My Oppama-built Maxima was a dream. Yeah, this one is slower, but it handles a heck of a lot better (Seriously, the all-aluminum independent suspension performs better than my lighter '02 with its sad rear torsion bar!) and the revised transmission is miles ahead of the '02's, but the quality issues are disheartening to an extreme. No squeaks or rattles in the '02 when it had 130,000 miles and was 8 years old, now the '05 is almost exactly the same age and everything feels like it's just barely hanging together.
It's silver with the frost interior, including the elite package (4 heated bucket seats), navigation, satellite radio, and traction control. No limited slip, but when I bought it, it even had the factory chrome wheels! So it's literally optioned with everything that Nissan offered that year--heated seats, mirrors, and steering wheel, auto-dimming rearview and sideview mirrors, bi-xenon lamps, rear power sunshade, rear center console between the two rear buckets, Bose with 6 CD in-dash changer, blah blah blah.
I can't even find an SL with the elite package to see what they go for so I could have some idea of where mine should be priced. Heck, I've only ever seen one other elite package on the road. Some lady pulled in next to me at the dentist's one day. It brought a tear to my eye, seeing my car's twin. (only with that terrible slushbox, of course)
Why am I selling? Well, I have a huge list of reasons that total up to ~$3000 to get it factory fresh. Everything from dealing with the ABS issue that popped up yesterday (drove through some pooled water about 3/4 inches deep on a highway exit that I didn't see until I was practically in it on Friday during all that flooding around the country), to needing new front suspension (shocks starting to trickle oil), to needing a new transmission mount (replaced the other three, now the engine vibrates excessively at idle and sometime idles roughly, Googling suggests the engine being unhappy that 3/4 mounts are new and they aren't all equally worn out), to needing a new $90 seat cushion from Nissan so's it doesn't dominate your lower back on long drives (I think the previous owner was, uh, rather large), to those stupid, horrible HVAC vents needing to be replaced (again, 3/4 are broken. That's $125 from Courtesy), to the driver's side mirror vibrating at speed, to a piece of the passenger side mirror being held on with JB weld (backed into an 80-year old one-car garage spot, snagged the mirror. Was furious.), to the damage done to the rear bumper when my wife closed the garage door on it, to the damage done to the front bumper from putting on 80,000+ highway miles over its life, to the 30,000 mile old precat throwing a P0420 again, to the shifter's reverse lockout being broken (see previous remark about the fatty owner) and shifter bushings needing to be replaced, to the lovely cd player being only able to play CDs 1-4, and now it won't play when cold, and now it won't play when WARM but the road has bumps. The anti-skip feature seems dead.
Reading all that probably made you angry, but I swear I've treated this car like a second son. I religiously change the oil with M1 0W-40, I wax it to keep those wonderful sparkles in the paint sparklin' away in the summer sun, I hose it down everytime I drive through salt, I completely tore down the engine to replace the dreaded timing chain guide failure, replaced the clutch pedal when its bracket broke to stop the squeaking, replaced the brakes and spark plugs when most people would give you a funny look for being too proactive, I even ran E0 (yes! ethanol free!) gasoline in it last summer, just to reward it for being a blast to drive in the twisties. It's just had a few run ins with garages that bother me.
No one wants a stick-shift Maxima, save some people on the Org, so it pains me to turn my car in to a Carmax or the like, but it's worth so little and needs so much work... I can't even find a stick-shift '04-'06 on Craiglist within 500 miles of Louisville, according to my searches on searchtempest.com
PS: I blame America. My Oppama-built Maxima was a dream. Yeah, this one is slower, but it handles a heck of a lot better (Seriously, the all-aluminum independent suspension performs better than my lighter '02 with its sad rear torsion bar!) and the revised transmission is miles ahead of the '02's, but the quality issues are disheartening to an extreme. No squeaks or rattles in the '02 when it had 130,000 miles and was 8 years old, now the '05 is almost exactly the same age and everything feels like it's just barely hanging together.
04-07-2014, 06:52 AM
#3
Welp, I spoke at length with my wife and she's adamantly opposed to us having a car payment again. Bleh. We agreed that I need to spend the $3000 or so to get the poor [huge, not little] guy into more of a factory-fresh condition. I'm not exactly pleased with having to hang on to the beast for any longer than I must, but maybe new suspension and a reworked seat will provide a more enjoyable experience.
I still have no idea what I can use to compare its worth to, though. Is it all for naught? Do the extra bells and whistles mean nothing on a car so aged? That is, does depreciation drop its hammer with such severity that the difference between a plain SE and a plain SL is only ~$500 and the jump from a plain SL to fully-loaded SL is only another $50?
I still have no idea what I can use to compare its worth to, though. Is it all for naught? Do the extra bells and whistles mean nothing on a car so aged? That is, does depreciation drop its hammer with such severity that the difference between a plain SE and a plain SL is only ~$500 and the jump from a plain SL to fully-loaded SL is only another $50?
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