In a perfect world, you can easily trade in your older vehicle and get a nice chunk of change taken off of the purchase of a newer vehicle. However, there are some vehicles that car dealerships simply do not want to deal with—clunkers. Car dealerships that take old clunkers often give very little trade-in value on them, if anything, because clunkers usually cannot be easily sold without a lot of money being put into the vehicle to make it run and look okay. Instead of getting next to nothing or nothing for your old clunker, here are a few ways you may see a little profit or at least feel a little better about getting rid of it.
Sell It
As the saying goes, "One man's trash is another man's treasure." Even though your clunker may have too many problems and issues for you to get fixed, someone else may want your clunker to either repair and resell as a hobby, to use as their personal vehicle, or to hand down to a family member. Look through social media used car sale pages to see if anyone is looking for used vehicles or to list your clunker to see if someone is up for the challenge.
Scrap It
The easiest thing to do is to scrap it or sell the old clunker to a scrapyard or junkyard. But that doesn't mean that you wouldn't need to do anything. You still have to clean out the vehicle and make sure the title is correct so you can sign it over to the junkyard. Cleaning out the vehicle doesn't mean that you have to vacuum the carpet and upholstery or wipe down the dashboard. However, it does mean that you need to remove any trash and all of your personal belongings from the vehicle, especially anything that has your name, contact information, and banking information on it.
Donate It
Another thing you can do is to donate it to a charity. There are many charities around that take clunkers and junk cars. Some charities simply sell the junk cars to salvage yards but others attempt to make repairs so they can give the repaired vehicles to people within the community who need them, such as single parents of children with medical conditions who need transportation so they can easily take their children to the hospital or doctor's offices whenever necessary. Another place that accepts donations are local trade schools that offer vehicle mechanic coursework.
