Hi all I'm after a bit of advice please. I've decided to sell my car and buy another and so I have to consider what's a fair price to ask. I'll tell you where I am and then tell you about the car in more detail.

I bought my 3.0 tdv6 Autobiography in January this year when it had 58,200 miles on the clock. I know that's big mileage but I only do 5k or so miles a year and thought that it was a price I was willing to spend to see if I liked the L405 more than the Discovery HSE Lux I had before it. Anyway when I bought it I paid £66,700, which included an additional Inchcape 2 year extended warranty.

The car is in fantastic condition, honestly, it could pass for something with half the miles and drives beautifully. No dings, scrapes or scuffs and I would say virtually unmarked. The only thing I could say against it is that there is some very minor flaking on two of the wheels but no kerbing. In fact the supplying dealer has agreed to have all four wheels professionally refurbished by the powder coat and baking method later this month. It has 62,700 miles on the clock now as I write and a full LR service history, the last of which was 1000 mile ago in September. It has a black contrast roof, Ivory leather and in terms of extras there are 22" style 6 wheels, including full size spare. When serviced last the tyres had between 6 and 7mm. It has the Meridian 1700watt Signature Reference hifi, privacy glass, a garage door opener and as I mentioned two year warranty (inchcape) when the manufacturers runs out in April next year.

So far I've seen four or five cars that I'm interested in, all either SE or AB 4.4's and around 12 to 18 months old. I've only started looking today and the cars that I've targeted are priced keenly in terms of their direct rivals but I've been offered 55k at one, 56k at another and the last one so far was 56.5k but that was on the most expensive car. All three have suggested there is still some wriggle room but I don't want to be greedy, just fair and I suppose mainly to myself but all of these offers are much better than webuyanycar.

So what do you think it's worth or am I already there?

I always focus on 'cost to change' - as some may offer a higher trade in and others a better discount of sticker price.

Do the new ones have the 1700w hifi - I'm not sure you can go back from that......

Try putting your car details in the ford cap connect to get a valuation and see what that tells you. https://www.capconnect.co.uk/ConsumerValue...&New=1

Failing that you can sign up to what car for free and they will give you a good idea as well of what trade in value you should achieve.

I appreciate that very much, Seems that the dealers have been more than fair because the upper price for a clean one on that site is £54K and the dealers are offering more. As previously posted the best price offered was £56.5 and even another one today offered £55.7K. And everyone of them has said they could tweak a bit

Alistair wrote:

I always focus on 'cost to change' - as some may offer a higher trade in and others a better discount of sticker price.

Do the new ones have the 1700w hifi - I'm not sure you can go back from that......

I too always have that as my main thought when buying but it only works perfectly if all of the cars that you are buying are virtually identical. For instance I was offered £56K on a Vogue se priced at £67K and £56.5 and £55.7 on two low mileage Autobiography's priced almost identically around £75K.

In terms of the Hifi; Neither have the hifi option. I'm embarrassed to say that the standard would be fine for my ear and I wouldn't ever pay £4k for it as an extra. Don't get me wrong it's excellent but I'd prefer to have one where someone else footed the option bill.

....at the end of the day, the main dealer can make an "over allowance" on your car, because;

a) they have big margin in what they are selling you

b) they have retail margin potential in what they are buying from you

If you do the same exercise for the car your buying on the cap connect site you will get a good idea of the true trade cost difference and can judge the deal your being offered a bit more!

Optional extras always bump up the second hand retail value but are rarely reflected truely in trade in prices and I think dealers play on that a lot to try get top margins for better speced cars when they probably have a bit of wiggle room!

Yep, think you are both right. All in all I'm happy and in a better position than I'd feared having done a webuyanycar estimate. Mine was £50.8k trade, whereas the two AB's that I like in grey and are on the Landrover site at £75k and £77k and they showed a trade price of £72k and£74k. One had 16 thousand miles and the other eight but unusually a red AB that I also liked (same age and 16 thousand miles) traded at £68k which is a lot of money on colour alone.

kbald wrote:

If you do the same exercise for the car your buying on the cap connect site you will get a good idea of the true trade cost difference and can judge the deal your being offered a bit more!

Optional extras always bump up the second hand retail value but are rarely reflected truely in trade in prices and I think dealers play on that a lot to try get top margins for better speced cars when they probably have a bit of wiggle room!

Just done that and there is a difference of £17.2k in terms of trade in value