In the next couple of weeks I’m going to get another car. My current car is a total POS 1988 VW Fox. I bought this last year in order for my step-daughter to have my 1993 Grand Am. I probably should have waited for a better car, but her father, who had promised her a car a couple of years before, failed to come up with one. I’ve been a VW nut for years and this one seemed to be OK. AT FIRST. The transmission went out first. I found a donor car cheap and fixed that. Since then it’s been downhill. My mechanic of 16 yars has decided to stop fixing cars in leiu of towing them (that’s his primary source of income anyway). No one in town will touch the car (there’s a weird VW phobia here despite the abundance of Jettas, Golfs, and Passats).
It’s not worth donating to charity and I am unlikely to sell it other than to a junkyard (which probably wouldn’t take it anyway). I’d like to destroy the damned thing somehow - sledge hammer, drop from a crane, floor the gas pedal until the engine explodes - and never have to worry about it again.
IF you are hell bent on destroying it, I’ve always wanted to charge people $2 to whack a car with a sledge hammer. Charge 'em an extra $2 for a polariod picture. Just don’t do it in your yard or something or else your neighbors might complain… unless you live in a bad trailer park or something
Well if you have confidence in your survival abilities, you just pull out all identifying info from the car and go full speed into a tree. If you survive, you have a nice story to tell someone. Driving it off a bridge or cliff is also acceptable.
Although you say it’s not worth donating to charity, the American Diabetes Association and other charity organizations really do want old junkers. The little money they get from recycling the cars must be worth it to them. This site lists some other charities to which you can donate your car.
Or the sledgehammer is always an option. Of course, it’s a little difficult to fit the pieces in a dumpster when you’re done.
Some high schools have car bashings to raise money for the band or other causes. You might even be able to get a tax break that way, and its kinda fun to watch.
Hmmm… Do they have demolition derbies in your area? I think there’s lots of prepwork required for these to do it safely, though. You might not want to go through all that hassle.
Donating it to the Red Cross or other organization is a great way to get rid of it easily and cheaply, and get a tax writeoff (at least in the US, any way).
If nobody in your town will work on them, but there’s a lot of 'em on the road, someone must want to buy it if only as a parts donor. Try an ad in the local paper.
And I’ve paid a dollar before to beat the stuffin’ out of a junker car with a sledge hammer. I picked a spot on the door, where the window slid in, and hit that same spot over and over and over, until I was half-way down the door. Damn, that was fun! They had to take the hammer away from me. A high school football team or a college frat would probably love it if you donated the car for this. Be sure you or they do all the environmental stuff first - drain the fluids to prevent contamination, arrange for cleanup afterwards, and for pickup of the remains. I’d charge extra for beating on the choice bits - windows, headlights, smashing off the mirrors, etc.
Believe me, the junkyard will take it. You probably won’t get much (if anything) for it, but they’ll almost certainly take the scrap metal and various parts. There’s always someone who needs a knob or brake rotor or seat cushion for their jalopy.
Barring that, you could douse it with gasoline and watch it burn with a smug satisfaction. Just make sure it’s… uh… legal.
Donate it to the Salvation Army. They took my 87 Civic and they didn’t care that it hardly ran & looked like hell. The temp guage ran into the red after 10 minutes of driving, there was almost no exhaust system and the factory installed radio was missing. They wrote me out a receipt for full bluebook ($3,750, if I remember right) which I promptly deducted from my taxes.
The scrap yard offered me $75 for the scrap metal value.
