Selling an old car in Switzerland - advice needed

[chandrew]

We need to find a new home for our 2003 Subaru Forester XT which we bought new when we arrived in Switzerland. It's now got just over 280,000km of almost faultless service, one year remaining of MFK, no rust (which tends to be the reason most of these stop running) and decent tread on both the summer and winter tyres. So whilst it's not worth much it could still provide cheap motoring for someone.

Any ideas on the best way to sell these sort of things?

[JC29]

Hi Andrew,

I found Ricardo.ch is a good bet for lower value stuff - AutoScout24 is ok but you get a lot of time wasters.

Or tutti.ch - it's like gumtree and free to list.

[Gruber]

Whereabouts are you?

Round here (Nyon, Vaud) there's a vibrant Facebook group for people buying and selling everything from pot plants to speed boats. There are often cars advertised and those that are sensibly priced, with decent pictures, etc seem to go pretty quickly to others within the expat community between Geneva and Lausanne.

There's definitely a strong market for a cheap runabout, with a new expertise from an anglophone vendor.

[chandrew]

Thanks both.

Gruber, I'm near Winterthur, though the car was bought in Geneva when we lived there so all the paperwork is in French. I'm also not on Facebook, but of course if there was a similar group near Zurich that could be changed.

[Gruber]

It appears there's a group called "ZURICH SALES!!!" with about 10,000 members. Might be worth a shot.

[HIAO]

If the MFK was done more than 12 months ago at the date of sale, the new owner will need to have a new one done. They won't get the benefit of your current MFK.

A fresh MFK will make it even easier to sell for your asking price.

[Chris944_S2]

Last weekend I sold my Passat W8 on Anibis.
Got contacted 18 minutes after the advert went up, and the chap came straight away to view & bought the car. Easiest sale I've ever had
I thought I would have been sitting on it for ages, being a car with a silly engine, but it went in no time. Just be realistic with the price, unlike some you see on autoscout24, and it should sell easily enough.

Ricardo is also a good bet. Many cars starting at CHF1 with no reserve end up reaching a reasonable price, so don't be scared of trying that.

[jamiebae]

I think tutti.ch is the best place for older and cheaper stuff, I've used it a lot to buy and sell motorbikes with good results and it's free to list too.

[chandrew]

Thanks for all the advice. In the end we've put it on Ricardo as an auction and have already hit the price we'd have hoped for with 7 days left to go.

I put a low starting price to get the bidding going and hoped that there was enough liquidity in the market to do the rest. At the moment it seems like a good approach for this type of car.

[chandrew]

Little update: Ricardo ended up being a good decision. Our dealer said it would command between 2000-3000 and we got the top end of that range. Bloke came round last week and put it on flatbed to take it back to Romania.