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My Experience Selling My Boss, FWIW

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Hey All,

Sold my '13 SBY Boss 302, which I bought new, this past July after 7 years of ownership. A little difficult to part with it but life moves on, I wasn't driving it much anymore and, well, these things happen. So thought I'd share my experience selling it, FWIW, should anyone else be thinking of selling theirs in the near future.

When I decided to sell I realized that had done a lot of track-oriented mods to it and that it'd be easier to sell (and I'd probably get a better price for it) if I undid all the mods and put it back to bone stock. Fortunately I'd kept all the stock parts and it wasn't cut up or anything, so this was doable. I did some of the work myself but didn't have time to do it all so I had a good local shop do most of the work. This cost about $2.5K in labor, but of course I also had a ton of take off aftermarket parts to sell, so this cost could be somewhat mitigated.

After trying (somewhat half-heartedly) to sell the car locally I decided to get serious. A few local dealers, naturally, gave low-ball offers and I didn't really want to go through the hassle of a private sale, dealing with tire kickers, etc. My daughter had, a few months earlier, sold her Subaru Outback to Carvana and she was pleased with what they gave her for it, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I went on the Carvana site and, after filling out the requisite online questionnaire about the car, requested an offer which would be good for 6 days. I got a reasonable offer, much higher than the dealer offers I'd gotten, but not quite what I was looking for. I let that offer expire and went back on Carvana a week or so later to see about another offer. Lo and behold they gave my another offer that was $1.5K higher than their first offer. This was within about $500-700 of what I was thinking I'd try to sell it for privately, so....SOLD!

After verifying the car's mileage and title status (uploaded pics of the odomoter reading and color hi-res photo of the front and back of the title) to Carvana, they accepted the car and I arranged to have it picked up a week or so later. They will only pick up a car w/in 100 miles of a Carvana location and since I'm about 150 miles from the nearest one, I ended up towing it down to a town closer to their closet location where I met up with the Carvana rep.

He showed up with a flatbed Carvana truck, inspected the car and took it for a short drive, we signed over the title (my wife had to go along because her name was also on the title), he gave us a check and we were on our way back home, sans the Boss.

Now I had a pile of aftermarket parts to sell, most used, some new/unused, and it took me several weeks to inventory, clean up and organize everything. I started selling off the parts in mid August and by now have sold all but a handful of items. I'd say on average I've recovered about 40% of the original parts cost, which may or may not be typical and except for a few items I've covered shipping costs. Of course, YMMV...

Probably the biggest hassle has been packing stuff up to ship to buyers. This takes a lot more time and effort than I thought it would, especially for larger/irregular shaped items. I had some of the original boxes that the various parts came in but not all, and several large items, like the 4-point Watson roll bar, I had to kludge together a shipping box. I must've spent 1.5 hours getting that thing ready to ship! Wheel boxes are another...just keep all your wheel boxes because tire & wheel shops generally don't have boxes lying around for wheels wider than 9" (finally found shipping boxes on OfficeDepot.com that worked). My advice is to keep EVERYTHING as it makes it much, much easier and less time consuming to pack up and ship things should you decide later on to sell stuff. And for sure, keep all your stock parts because you just never know...

All in all, my Boss ownership experience was very positive and I had tons of fun driving and tracking it during my ownership, including a memorable road trip to the Road America vintage races with my son early on. I went a little too crazy with aftermarket stuff, as many of us do, but what the heck. It was all worth it.

Thank you for all your great advice and forum camaraderie. This is easily the best "marque" forum on the internet, with more knowledgable, helpful members and just good people, and no trolls or annoying know-it-alls, unlike many other car forums. Best wishes to all of you with your Bosses, GT350s and other S197 and S550 Mustangs. Enjoy them for the very special machines they are. I'll continue to lurk around here as I'm sure I'll have another Mustang down the road.

Cheers to all!
 
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Thank you for all your great advice and forum camaraderie. This is easily the best "marque" forum on the internet, with more knowledgable, helpful members and just good people, and no trolls or annoying know-it-alls, unlike many other car forums. Best wishes to all of you with your Bosses, GT350s and other S197 and S550 Mustangs. Enjoy them for they very special machines they are. I'll continue to lurk around here as I'm sure I'll have another Mustang down the road.

Cheers to all!
Thank you and thank you for being part of TMO the past 7 years. By all means lurk away and participate whenever you can. Looks like you have plenty of fun cars to drive. Post photos of some of them and especially the 70 911.
 
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Well that seems like a great result for you, dabossinne! Looks like you have a lot of fun cars anyway, although the Bosses as so much fun I have to admit! Carvana is something I would never have even thought about but they do have one in my area.

I am getting rid of my Focus RS and am trying to figure out the best scenario, in part because I have zero time or interest in dealing with selling it myself (last time I sold a motorcycle, guy showed up with 500 dollars less than we had agreed to and was shocked when I kicked him out of my garage). I got a very good offer on my RS from my local Ford dealer and might parlay it into ordering a GT350R but need to maybe get some other offers before deciding.
 
dabossinnnne, I'm still having fun with my Boss....As is Son.I'm not a Carvana fan. I understand it's a convenience, but I'd rather see a car I'm thinking of buying in person and take it for a test drive........Old dog...........Old tricks.................
 
dabossinnnne, I'm still having fun with my Boss....As is Son.I'm not a Carvana fan. I understand it's a convenience, but I'd rather see a car I'm thinking of buying in person and take it for a test drive........Old dog...........Old tricks.................

Rock on, my man. Glad to hear you & your son continue to have fun with your Boss.

I'd agree as far as buying a car from Carvana, although I'm not sure exactly how it works as far as test driving and inspecting a car prior to purchase from them. As far as selling a car to them, it worked for me but may or may not work for others.

It's clear they are trying to grow rapidly and compete with Carmax, so I'd presume they are being pretty aggressive on what they'll offer for decent cars beyond what's offered at Manheim auctions in order to build up their inventory at different locations across the country.
 
Buying a car from Carvana seems pretty straight forward.....You find what you want on their website and when you get it, you have a week to decide if you want to keep it or not...............I'd rather go to a dealer in person................I don't know how much money is being saved with the Carvana mode?
 
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TymeSlayer

Tramps like us, Baby we were born to run...
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2,740
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Brighton, Colorado
Nice write up @dabossinnne - Takes a lot of work to build 'em up and just as much with a smidge of sadness to tear them back down. I wish you all the best and hope you still hang out here from tyme-to-tyme with these good 'ol boys on TMO.
 

drano38

Wayne
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Nice write-up of your experience.
My Boss may go to another pasture in the next year or so also--may buy an in-law's house, and I won't build another toy garage.
Agree, the roll bar is a tough job. Need new side plastic panels, and boxing it would sure be some work. But most likely smart to remove it if selling to a non-track person.
Don't think I'd take the MGW out. WATTS link -maybe. Aluminum driveshaft? Would like to, but fighting the stock boat anchor back in would be miserable. Shocks/struts/springs are easy, but not sure they're worth much used.
 
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@drano38 . I sold my Boss with the MGW in it. To much of a PITA to change out. Threw the stock shifter in the trunk. All those other parts are very easy to change out. If you have access to a lift all the better. I don't think you will get any more for it, and possibly less with the aftermarket parts on it. All those parts will be gone in no time on your local CL. Or here.
 
Nice write-up of your experience.
My Boss may go to another pasture in the next year or so also--may buy an in-law's house, and I won't build another toy garage.
Agree, the roll bar is a tough job. Need new side plastic panels, and boxing it would sure be some work. But most likely smart to remove it if selling to a non-track person.
Don't think I'd take the MGW out. WATTS link -maybe. Aluminum driveshaft? Would like to, but fighting the stock boat anchor back in would be miserable. Shocks/struts/springs are easy, but not sure they're worth much used.

One of the online form questions Carvana asks when evaluating your car before they make you an offer, is if your car has aftermarket modifications. I answered that question "no", but had I answered "yes" I'd imagine they would have wanted more specific information about the modifications. I would think this would affect their valuation of your car but don't know to what extent, and it could be that a with highly modified car they might decline an offer. Don't know for sure, though.
 

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