The Auction

Roughly four years ago my ford escort blew a headgasket so I needed a new car. I decided to go to a public car auction called Auto Auctions of America(in Murray just of the 53rd S. exit) I purchased a Toyota Camry for $750 rode it for about a year and then got the Civic. Well Kailey is doing an internship for her dental asst. and will be going to work with a dentist every other day this semester, while next semester she will be going to the DATC. This would be really hard to make it work, dropping her off all the time, or letting her use one of the vehicles, plus I am tired of being her chauffeur. So we decided we needed another car.

One thing that we wanted to do was have Kailey be responsible for paying for the car. I am of the belief that since I don't usually get anything for free(esp. a car) that in order to teach this to my kids they need to earn whatever they get. We don't do allowance, there is no real world application. I have never gotten any money just because I am alive. I have gotten and currently get money if I am willing to work for it. When our kids do want money they can do extra chores to earn it. So with the car we knew that Kailey wouldn't be able to get a loan, plus she hasn't quite saved enough, so we got a loan for her, she will make a payment every month. Real Life.

Anyhow let's get to the auction, every Sat at 11 they have an auction. There are all sorts of vehicles ranging from a 89 Ford Tempo to a 2007 Honda Civic. You can get there early, even throughout the week, test drive, bring a mechanic, do whatever you want to check out the vehicles. There were over 100 to choose from. We got there early and picked out about 5 that we thought would be good, test drove them, made sure they were in good shape, that the air/heat worked etc... We narrowed our list to about 3 at the time of the auction. We felt good about our choices.

Let me explain the auction. They have a real life auctioneer. He talks fast, real fast, too fast, just like they are supposed to. It is fun just to hear him get going. They drive each vehicle in and the bidding begins. They have a blue book value which is the high value (of course) to help guide the bidding. The bidding starts high and then if no one bids it goes lower. Once the first bid is made the action heats up. On the nicer cars the bidding may go between 5 or 6 different people. Our second choice for a car was actually hotly contested, we ended up not even bidding, and since it was a dodge neon and I don't really like them I didn't really want to bid anyhow.

In reality the auction is like KSL cars in one place. Instead of driving to 100 homes you just go to one place. Saves time and disappointment, when you open the door and smells or looks bad. I totally suggest at least trying it out.

Finally our car came in, a 92 Toyota Camry. Kailey was born in 92 so this is kind of funny. Before I go any further I need to say that of all the vehicles we drove this one was by the far the smoothest and cleanest. In fact it wasn't close, Kailey, Reed(grandpa), and myself all liked this car the best, even though it was in reality the oldest. Kailey got real excited when it drove in, we waited for the first bid to go down to $500 and then jumped in, turns out we were in a bidding war. Finally we won at $850. Only problem was some cars have a low bid protection, in other words if the winning bid is too low they don't have to take it. They made a call and the guy wanted $1200, I countered with no more than $1000, we finally settled on $950. There are some fees you pay as well as sales tax. So that isn't the final price. But we all felt good about the price and the car. BTW, the blue book is $2,100, so yeah I feel real good now.

We called Janalynn and she was skeptical about the year, but as soon as we got home she couldn't believe how good of condition the car was in. In fact she talked about just having a 3rd car for us and not giving it to Kailey for her own. Kailey was excited and I am just happy this is over.

Favorite things about the auction:
Can't beat the adrenalin when the bidding war is on.
Love the fact you can't really tell most of the auctioneer is saying.
A GMC Safari was sold for $100. Hey it works.
Most cars went for half of the high blue book value.
Every once in a while the auctioneer would say "This next car is going to the highest bidder." I thought that was a classic line.
They offer a Seller Auction Guarantee, 48 hours or 50 miles. In other words if the car dies on you before you get it home they guarantee it. You would hope that wouldn't happen. Funny thing is they would say "This car is guaranteed." As if this was some wonderful guarantee. I found it amusing they said it with nearly every car.
Finally seeing how excited Kailey was, well that was priceless.