Should I sell my failing car for scrap?
You can often squeeze much more money out of a high-mileage or totaled car rather than just taking the initial scrap offer to avoid hassle. Instead of letting the insurance company or bank keep it, you can significantly increase your payout by going to auction, negotiating the offer, or pointing out missed premium features.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- This comes up 13.2× more often in r/personalfinance than across the site as a whole.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Asking a mechanic if the engine or parts have resale valueDid this help you?
- 2Selling the entire vehicle to an automotive enthusiast instead of a scrapyardDid this help you?
- 3Surrendering the vehicle to the insurance company to avoid the hassle of dealing with a salvage title.Did this help you?
- 4Negotiating the vehicle's valuation with the insurance adjuster using local comps and missed premium features.Did this help you?
- 5Keeping the salvage car to use as a personal beater rather than attempting to repair and flip it for profit.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“It's got almost 300,000 km on it and iss getting to the point where it just keeps having new issues every few months. I was thinking of maybe selling it for scrap”source ↗
“I've done this a few times and it works well if you don't mind dents or miss matched panels.”source ↗
“I was able to get a couple hundred more because they missed some premium features on car that was declared a total loss.”source ↗
“My offer went from $1500 to $6000 after negotiations.”source ↗
“As things stand, I'm leaning towards letting insurance/bank keep it just to avoid any further hassle. But if there's some kind of spicy/smart route I can take, for instance, auctioning the car for something more than 4k to squeeze as much as I can out of it, I would try that.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 2Should I sell my unused second car or keep it as a backup?
- 148Is it worth fixing an old car when repairs cost more than it's worth?
- 14Should I sell my paid off car to invest the cash?
- 22Is it safe to keep driving with needle bearings in the transmission pan?
- 3Should I tear out old plaster or put drywall over it?
- 53Is it a smart idea to buy a new car right now?