Car Selling Services (Motorway, Carwow, etc)

[Dingle Dell]

Having recently sold my LC, just thought I would share my selling experience in case it helps anyone else if they are unsure how well they work.

Selling a car of this value privately isn’t for me (actually, these days make that at any value), even if you could possibly get a little bit extra, so I phoned around a few Lexus dealers. I was offered between 66 and 71K. At this time, We Buy Any Car were only offering around 65K. I contacted a few high end showrooms directly such as Redline (who bought my Gulia Quadrifoglio with no hassle), and Romans, but ultimately, although they initially aid they were very interested, it didn’t lead anywhere and I got fed up chasing them, so I thought I would put it on ‘Motorway’. The process was fairly straight-forward to use and once they had all the info and photos of the car and documentation they needed, it went into the next days auction.

I had three offers by that evening, the lowest being 67K, the highest being 75K. You only find out who the highest bidder is if you accept, so I was relieved to find the winning bid was by Lexus themselves, at Gatwick. There are certain ‘specialist’ garages out there that have a very poor reputation with regard to picking the cars up and paying out, (i.e. saying they will pay once they get the car back to their showroom and the manager can inspect it...) etc. I decided to accept the offer, and within the week, the car had been collected, with the money paid into my account before they drove it away, so all very hassle free.

No doubt it doesn’t always go this smoothly, but I think on a majority of occasions it probably does and I would recommend considering using services like Motorway or Carwow.

Financially, of course I lost a reasonable sum, but if I hadn’t bought carefully, or had bought some of the other cars I was considering, I could have lost much, much more. Ultimately 5K for 7 months ownership of a nearly new 100K car is very reasonable. I’m not saying 5K is loose change, it certainly isn’t, but it’s all relative, and there’s plenty of people out there paying 1K a month to finance their mundane daily drives, while I had a beautiful LC at my disposal all 'summer'. I have also looked at leasing some exotic cars in the past for a few weeks/months over summer (never did in the end), and 5K wouldn’t have gone far at all.

[Herbie]

A mate of mine had exactly the same trouble-free experience with Motorway, with Lexus Lincoln (or could have been Leicester) winning the bid.

Strangely enough, he wasn't actually in the market to sell and was only wanting to find its value so that he could work out his options, but the offer was that good that he would have been a fool to refuse.

[MNMJ]

It is good to hear that Motorway is suitable for high end cars; if no forum member is after my car when it comes to sell, and Lexus garages are not interested, then I'll use them.  We sold a Skoda Citigo through Motorway and got an excellent price, with a easy experience. I checked out the purchasing garage online and found they didn't have the highest reputation, but they paid before they left so no problem. 

[Brian R]

Another big vote for Motorway having sold a Yeti, a Jag and a BMW through them. All very trouble free and excellent prices that were promptly paid upon collection. I really cannot be bothered to use or even further contemplate WBAC having tried to sell them my mother in laws VW. They eventually offered £50 but I (not unsurprisingly) accepted £1700 from a local garage who had serviced the car 2 weeks beforehand! I also tried Carwow who frankly were not much better.

[96 par]

wbac atm are a complete pxxx take ,got a car for sale and thinking the best way to do it not in the same price range as yours but was a bit sceptical as its dealers bidding and they wont pay to much as they are looking to earn on it 

[Bootcamper]

Another vote for Motorway.  My Lexus dealer suggested them when buying my NX.  Motorway came in £5k above the Lexus P/X figure.

[Tickedon]

When I sold my last car, I had a problem with Motorway - can’t remember what the issue was - so ended up via Carwow, similar setup I think where traders bid for cars.

The highest bid was a small trader approx 2 hours away. They were useless at confirming if they were actually going to show up or not, to the point I wasn’t going to believe it until they were physically there. They arrived (two people), and noted they’d not bought a car they’d looked at earlier - I wonder if they had been successful with that one, whether they’d have simply not shown up with me. 

They spent quite a bit of time looking over my vehicle, pointing out defects that had been clearly shown in photos and noted on the sales material and carwow description. Asked for a test drive, they broke the local speed limits, but they seemed happy enough. Then they tried to haggle(!) - I think they’d bid £10.5k via carwow. I just stuck to my guns and didn’t budge an inch. But this continued for 15 minutes. I was at the point of telling them to get lost, and I’m annoyed that in response to their “come on, why not £10250” etc. I didn’t start adding £50 on and upping my price every time they tried to knock my price down.

I was conscious they’d travelled far and probably wouldn’t have wanted to leave empty handed… eventually they sent £500 to check my account got it and then the balance of £10k followed. But I can see that many people may have given in to their very persistent approach.

Carwow followed up to find out if the sale went through - presumably as they want to bill the dealer for their commission. I flagged the rather horrendous experience, didn’t get more than an acknowledgment. Carwow weren’t interested.

So while it will always be dependent on the trader who is buying,I definitely wouldn’t use Carwow again given they were completely indifferent. I only change vehicles every 5-7 years, so I’m hoping a better option might exist before I need to sell my current Lexus.

[Grumps]

I recently sold my 2018 NX through Motorway, with similar positive experience to others.

The only thing I would point out is that the minimum price where bidding was to start was not reached. I had three offers and the top offer was only just below the expected minimum price, so I sold it. All in all a very easy process.

[Dingle Dell]

Yes, I forgot to mention that bit. Motorway estimate was around 77.5K, so my best offer was a little way off that. A few weeks earlier Motorways estimate was 79K, but even at the time, I thought that was rather unrealistic. 

[GMB]

We sold a car to motorway a few years ago and they were pretty fair, honest and easy to deal with. The car was faultless and they admitted that they could find no reason to reduce the offer. I have found that they (generally) seem to offer about £2K below retail which is fair enough considering fixed costs, risks and a few possible repairs/fixes.  Lexus recently offered 13K for my 2017 Lexus which would retail ( based on autotrader results over the last year) for about 16.5 - 17K £. I think a £4k margin is a bit cheeky considering the car is absolutely spot-on.  So, my thinking is that Motorway seem a better option than talking to Lexus - who would probably consider the car from motorway anyway?

[Dingle Dell]

I was amused to see the Lexus dealer had my car up for sale (marked as 'in preparation'), while it was still sat in my garage lol. I knew then that if they tried to haggle the price down when they picked it up, I would tell them where to go, as they had marked the price up 12.5K  😂

[Ruffle]

I've sold two cars through Motorway and got more than the estimate for both. No hassle really and I'd use them again.