Check with your local police, and see if they will accept it as a donation. Sometimes they have car auctions, with the proceeds going into the policemen’s retirement funds or a widow’s pension.
I think you can write it off on your taxes if you get a receipt, also.
you should sell it privately if you want to get the most money out of it. I’d think you could get at least a grand for it.
crosing fingers hoping to not have a triple post
While I don’t know how beat up it is, you can get a pretty decent ballpark quote via the Kelly Blue Book. My 1988 Camry, over 100,000 miles and beat to hell, sold for about $2000. That’s not a quote, that’s what it sold for.
http://www.kbb.com/kb/ki.dll/kw.kc.bmm?kbb&&51&&
Without seeing it, you could probably sell it for around $1000 as a WAG.
I don’t suppose, ah, that your 1990 Celica is the AllTrac version, is it? If it is, I’ll buy it…
Keep it, if you can afford to. A fun car is, well, fun. And with a new little baby, you’ll need to have an outlet. We sold our Miata when my son was born, but we were still making payments. I still really miss that car.
But, if you must sell it, selling it yourself is your best option by far. Last year I was offered $200 trade-in on a 89 Civic with 175000 miles. It was a little rusty but ran like a champ and had years left. I sold it for $1200 to the first person who looked at it. And I had ten other calls about it that week. A 1990 Celica should easily go for that much, if not more. Any teenager would love that car. If you need the deduction, donation is also a good idea. I always like cash in hand, though, myself.
Good luck.
Several people have mentioned donating the car. If you donate to a charity, you should know that you can deduct the fair Blue Book value from your tax donations–which will likely be more than the $50 that snarky dealer wanted to give you.
The donation has been mentioned but not the exact amount of the deduction. That would be your best bet if you can’t find a desperate college student upon which to bestow it.
I have donated two cars to the Kidney foundation folks.
What they do is give you the paperwork when the car is picked up and on it’s way to them. This way they haven’t actually seen the car yet. So, they are allowed to claim that it’s in the best condition that the Kelly Blue Book has without lying.
So, a car worth only a couple hundred bucks can easily be deducted from taxes for thousands.
Any deductions over $500 dollars (for anything, not just cars) must have some paperwork. A reciept or such. The place you are donating the car to will give you this.
Any deductions over $5000 must be accompanied by an appraisal from an “authorized appraiser”. For cars, this generally means a dealership. Basically impossible to get.
For this reason most cars donated are for $4999 dollars.
Depending on what tax bracket you are in, this is usually much more than the car is worth.
*Sell it on locally on eBay
*Take it to a park & sell lot
*Take it to a used car dealer and negotiate a deal
An auction should fetch 3-500 clams for that puppy. I see this all the time: cars with 125-150k on them and they go for 300-1000 bucks. Usually around 125k, the max is 1200 bucks…but some Japanese makes fetch 2200!
Don’t know if an auction is an option, but you’d get a few hundred for it that way.
Yea, the Toyotas really…I don’t want to say “hold” their value, but are pretty expensive, relatively, in the used car market.
Seriously, that dealer was trying to screw you.
Thanks to everyone who replied, including those whose names I don’t mention below.
handy and others…I can’t believe I didn’t think of a college student, seeing as I finished grad school this May!
Necros, nope, it’s not the All-Trac.
DaddyTimesTwo, I’m actually finding my new 4-door car quite cool (Mazda Protege5). Sunroof, 6-CD changer, cruise control, power windows, etc are all new to me. MrValley has actually swiped it to drive a few times.
Philster, I have never heard of selling your car by auction. How does a private citizen do this?
Everyone else, do you know what kind of liability is involved in selling your own car? It runs super great for me now, but if I sell it and it suddenly dies for an unknown reason, how responsible would I be?
In general you sell a car “as is”. You can write “as is” in the bill of sale.
Legally, you have to apprise the buyer of all major issues, you can’t hide anything. I think that’s right.
If you donate a car for, say, $3000 (not sure how the value is determined) the value of taxes saved will depend on your tax bracket. But if you’re in the 33% bracket, for example (if there even is one), you’d save a cool grand.
A 1990 car that runs well is worth a grand minimum. That’s not alot of miles, so I would definitely think you could get that.
Considering that your best offer so far is 75 dollars, selling it privately is certainly worth the time and effort. Hell, I’ll give you a hundred for it, and you have that right here in writing. Course, I don’t know where you are, so I guess that depends on how far I have to come to get it.
The best answer normally would be to wait till one of your local dealers has a “$XXXX minumum for your trade” offer, given that you (presumably) don’t owe anything on it, but that isn’t really an option anymore…
I’ll give ya 200 for it (again, depending where you are at). Look, you are allready auctioning it 
Sorry for the hijack, but this post contains lots of misinformation.
The reason charities don’t give you a quote for the value of the donation is that they are not in the business of appraising vehicles. It is left to the donor to determine the fair market value (FMV) of the vehicle. You can only deduct the FMV of the vehicle. You cannot make up your own price ($4,999) or even use the Kelly Blue Book value for the car in “excellent” condition unless the car is really in excellent condition and you could reasonably find a buyer who would pay that much.
You must determine what the car you are donating is worth. The FMV is defined as what you could sell the car for in an “arm’s length” sale. This means FMV is what real people, not related to you, would be willing to pay for the car. If it is in fair condition, this may well be only $200 or so.
Also, unless you itemize deductions on your federal taxes, you can’t claim the charitable deduction anyway. You are best off selling the car for as much as you can get and then donating the proceeds (or a portion of the proceeds) to charity. Of course, once you have the cash in hand, you might not feel so charitable.
The dealer offered you $50 because he doesn’t want to be bothered with it. Or you got a really good deal on the car you bought and he’s trying to make a few bucks from your trade.
Selling it to a college or high school student is a great idea! If you want to/can afford to keep it, it isn’t a bad idea, either. When I started college, I was driving a beat-up, 11-year-old Geo Prizm. I bought a nice new car two months later but kept the Prizm for workhorse stuff. After my freshman year, it died, and now the new car has almost 40 000 extra miles on it. (It’s 2).
Put an ad in the paper or in your local college if you want to sell it. Or look in the papers for places that accept donations.