In our last installment (Sorry that it’s been two years. Life happens.), I’d mentioned that I was breaking off the steamy short-term affair I was having with an all-original B13 SE-R. My kids were at or coming up on driving age, and I was soon looking at four cars in the driveway with no room for one more. So it was time to sell my beloved SE-R, a mission that turned out way harder than it should have been.
For those who don’t want to go back and read the post, I had finally achieved my dream of buying a classic car after nearly forty years of driving and a lifetime as an automotive enthusiast. This car was owned by a serial SE-R purchaser – his third – who’d acquired it two years before from the son of the original owner and had it shipped from California to his home in Chicago as a father-son COVID project. It wasn’t “restored” so much as “refreshed”, which is why I still use the term all original even though I know it’s a stretch. I flew to Chicago, drove it back to my home in Connecticut, joined a car club, and enjoyed the 7,500 RPM redline as well as the completely analog driving experience for about a year and a half. Then, as much as I wanted to, I just couldn’t justify keeping the Sentra.
In my completely inexperienced estimation, I thought that a rust-free California ur-SE-R in rust-prone Connecticut would be an easy sell, netting me the money I’d spent for the car plus the little that I’d put into it. I’ve had the good fortune to only have to privately sell a car twice in my life. The first time was my first car, in which all I had to do was list the car and my father handled the sale while I was at school. The second time, I just unloaded the thing at CarMax. The other cars were either donated or given to family members in need.
The process began promising. I’d taken what I thought were good photos of the car and created listings on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. I purchased the car for $8,000 (down from the $8,500 asking price). With inflation and the work I’d put into the car, I calculated that $9,500 was a fair asking price, hoping to get at least $9,000.
I didn’t want any surprises at the sale. So, the listings included the history of the car, everything that had been fixed or added, and the few items that needed to be addressed. On Facebook, the response was overwhelmingly positive, with one person commenting that this should be the standard by which all car listings should be measured. Unfortunately, none of these positive responses resulted in any offer above $5,000. After a few weeks, I paid for an eBay listing as well.
The most common inquiry was the “Is this car still available?” email, where the person doesn’t respond after you confirm that the car is still available. I think people just like to hit that button for fun. My favorite was “I have [insert lowball offer here]”. I would respond with “Good luck finding a car that you can drive cross-country trouble free for that money.” I actually wanted to just say, “Good for you” but I needed to get that extra jab in there.
It turns out that when a car has 175,000 miles, it doesn’t matter what condition it’s in. It’s not worth more than $5,000. I guess my Sentra love really worked against me here, but I was sure the car was worth more than that regardless of what I paid.
After I lowered the price to $8,500, I received an inquiry from someone I’ll call Florida Man (with everything that the term implies). We exchanged a few emails, then set up a phone call. He has his own Nissan car and parts business down in Miami and is apparently well known in Nissan circles. He was quite surprised that I hadn’t heard of him. He was interested in the car, and we’d agreed on $8,000. He’d planned to fly up in a few weeks to complete the purchase. I asked for a deposit, but he told me that I didn’t need one because I should trust him. Everyone else trusted him, and I should as well. I told him the listings stay active without a deposit. He wasn’t thrilled but accepted it.
That’s when things got weird.
About a week later, I heard back from one of the early speculators, whom I’ll call New York man, and he wanted to come up that day to look at the car. My feeling is that if he’s coming all the way up here just to look at the car, which is a 2 ½-hour drive without traffic, he was likely going to make an offer. I texted Florida man to give him one last opportunity to leave a deposit. I didn’t hear back, so I let New York man know he could come up. As I expected, he did like the car and, coincidentally, had done some Nissan parts business with Florida Man. Since Florida Man was giving me some strange vibes, I’d agreed to sell the car to New York man for $7,500.
About an hour after I got home, I got a text from Florida Man. It was a picture of a late 90s 200SX SE-R, the successor to my car. This was followed by another text stating that this was the car he was going to buy instead of mine. He repeated how I should have trusted him, and that people who don’t trust other people are usually not very trustworthy themselves (completely ignoring the argument that those same people may have been screwed over by someone who said, “Trust me”). I wished him good luck with his purchase and was happy to be done with him.
On the day New York man was supposed to pick up the car, I received a panicked phone call from him telling me that since the car has no title, as Connecticut does not title cars 20 years old or older, he would not be able to register the car in New York. I found this hard to believe as classic cars move between Connecticut and New York all the time. He said he called the DMV twice and received the same answer. He apparently was informed that he’d have to trailer the car to Albany from his home in the Bronx and have a full inspection done and, even then, there was no guarantee that he’d be able to register the car. I told him I’d call the NY DMV then call him back since I knew questions sometimes need to be phrased in a certain way to get the best results. I called the DMV and asked, “I live in Connecticut and am selling my classic car to a New York resident. Connecticut doesn’t issue titles to classic cars, so what does he need to provide to register the car?” The helpful DMV employee said he just needs the car’s current registration and a filled-in CT Bill-of-Sale form, and he shouldn’t have a problem.
I called him back and told him what I learned, thinking the issue was resolved. Now he was even more panicked because of the conflicting answers. Needless to say, he chose not to purchase the car.
About an hour or two later, I received a text from Florida Man telling me that he’d heard that my buyer had backed out and that I would have a very hard time selling the car outside of Connecticut due to the lack of a title. However, he has “a particular set of skills” that would enable him to get the car registered, so he will allow me to sell him the car, but would only give me $7,000, not the originally agreed upon $8,000.
Did you ever get the feeling you were being played? I deleted the text and blocked his number.
Since my son was about to graduate high school and would need my Sonic, which I promised to give him for his awesome academic track record, I planned to press the Sentra into service as my daily driver. If everyone else thinks the car is only worth about $5,000, I was going to get at least another $3,000 in value out of it.
That’s when I received an inquiry from an interested party from, thankfully, Connecticut. He was only in his early 20s, but both he and his older brother had owned a series of B13 SE-Rs, and he was looking for another one. We’d agreed on $7,300 and planned to meet in a neutral location to complete the deal.
That Saturday, as we were about to leave for the meet, my phone rang. It was the buyer, and he informed me he was still planning to buy the car, but he would only give me $7,000 for the car. The conversation went something like this:
“We agreed on $7,300!”
“I know, but I’m only going to give you $7,000.”
“Then you’re not getting the car. I won’t do business with someone who can’t keep his word.”
“Well, I’m going to be there with $7,000 cash.”
“Then you’re going to be there by yourself.”
Thankfully, I had two things in my favor. First, I could easily revert to my original plan and use the Sentra as my daily driver. It would definitely make driving to work a lot more fun. Second, I knew he really wanted the car. He ultimately made the right decision, but the deal was now soured. I had no idea what to expect when I arrived at the meeting site.
On the way down, I repeatedly tried to engage cruise control to no avail. If not for the above conversation, I might have disclosed that to him.
After arriving, he and his brother pointed out several issues with the car, and I countered that every one of those issues was disclosed in the listing. After a short test drive, he handed over the full amount and, after counting it, my wife and I got the hell out of there. When we arrived home, I immediately took down all three listings and tried to forget the whole experience. As I’m writing this nearly two years later, you can see how successful that’s been.
Shortly after, one of the other members of my car club sold his C2 Corvette. I asked him about his experience, and he said, “Oh, I sold it the next day at the full asking price.” Must be nice.
My last two vehicle “sales” involved filling out some forms online and donating my last two motorcycles to our local NPR station. In 2017, we gave our oldest car to our daughter, and the year before, we sold our Prius to our son for a family discount. We even accepted a personal check from him. Between 2004 and 2014, three Craigslist sales that went … OK.
By the way, the movie One Battle After Another got a lot of Oscar attention, though I thought it too was just OK. But it has some good CC’s including a major role for a Sentra of this generation that might even be an SE-R.
I saw that Sentra too in OBAA! I now recall thinking that I would have to check more carefully to see if it was an SE-R (I recall it being the Ruby Pearl of the one that I had)…but then the rest of the movie was so irritating that forgot about checking.
I sold my Miata back before Covid through a CL ad, and the process went smoothly. But then I was at a much lower price point. And the car was red. 🙂
Even so, my Mrs keeps telling me I shouldn’t be doing private sales any more, because of those occasional stories of some guy getting killed over a transaction. In truth, I’m not as enthusiastic about the process as I used to be.
I feel your pain. So many knuckle heads out there. Here are just two of mine. Buyer (Bill) and his buddy(Ted)appear an hour late to buy my well worn 79 Honda CB650. Accurately described in a print ad, I stated that test rides will only take place with the full price in cash, $600 in this case, and his driver’s license (with a motorcycle endorsement) in my hand. They immediately quibble, but agree when I start to close the garage door.Bill can’t ride, so Ted gets in the saddle. I warn him this is a well used 20 year old bike, please take it easy, and if he trashes it, falls, or damages it, Bill owns it. He pulls out of my driveway and blasts down my residential street like Mike Hailwood, running through the gears at lightening speed with the engine screaming past it’s redline. Ted returns and relates litany of items. Clutch slips, burns/ leaks oil, engine misses, shimmy at high speed, tires too round, etc.The conversation was short, you beat on it damaging it so you own it – no negotiation. I hand him his license back, the signed title and congratulate Bill on his purchase. They both left with few words. A week later, Bill returned in his rusty Monte Carlo SS to pick the bike up with his pissed off wife and angry German Shepard . No words were exchanged.
I sold my 1988 Honda ZB50 (yes ZB, not Z50) to a private party next day, full price ($3500), no questions asked. Moral of the story? If that happens, you weren’t asking enough. Lesson learned.
You didn’t do anything wrong, you just got some weirdos.
If you know the Florida Man trope, you might enjoy Carl Hiaasen’s black-comic south Florida novels.
With my most recent three cars, I met the sellers at my bank and withdrew the cash. I would have been fine with giving the sellers cashier’s checks, but they were OK with cash. If they wanted to walk around with that much cash on them, that was their business.
I’m looking to replace my 2005 Honda Civic. I’m thinking that when I have the replacement car, I may just donate the Civic to one of the listener-supported radio stations I listen to.
Coincidentally, I just picked up “Double Whammy” again in celebration of the new ABC series “RJ Decker”. I read it probably 30 years ago, but the only character I remember is dead dog’s head that was permanently attached to the idiot bad-guy’s arm. I think he named it Lucas. As for the Civic, if the car is in decent, drivable condition, I like donating to outfits like the Good News Garage that gives the cars to families in need rather than just selling or auctioning them off and keeping the money.
Sounds like a hellish experience. That’s the difference between selling a C2 Corvette vs most others, some cars never lose their lust factor.
Another of the very few quasi-affordable (ie. non-Ferrari GTO &c) very easy-sale equivalents is any pre-WWII Harley, I could have sold 10 of them when I sold my ’42 WLA last year.
Looked like a fun little car, but yes the online car selling process has been ruined by idiots and lowballers. I’m just really discerning about what responses I work with now. If you can’t put together a couple of polite sentences I’m not following up.
My own seller hell story is here (and it’s also a manual transmission car – coincidence I think not)
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/cc-crickets-the-focus-nobody-wants-to-buy/
One young fellow I know was selling an old pickup, and the buyer used every scammy tool imaginable. He negotiated a (low) price, then showed up and didn’t have all the money. Got the truck anyway, then called an hour later and said he’d made a mistake and given him too much money (and was told to screw off). Then a week later seller got a call from a mechanic who had done a bunch of work on the truck and was told the previous owner would pay for it. Mechanic also was told to screw off. The nerve of some people.
Make sure you have a good anti-theft system. Door lock cylinders can be easily turned with vise-grips; I learned that twice in 1995.I had the exact same 2-door model, a base one , charcoal , with the 1.6L engine. I wore out the clutch at 35,000 km. I hope it will be more durable for you on the SR.I survived this incredibly unsafe model; see the following: a 2015 Nissan Tsuru,( same as a N.-A. 1995 ) the least expensive sedan sold by Nissan in Mexico
Three of the more recently sold cars went to Carvana, holy crap, what a great and smooth process all three over them were over a span of about three years, so not a momentary glitch in time. Offers (that were honored after sending them no more than 6 pictures of each vehicle) of more than I would have expected locally, zero fuss, ontime pickups and transfer of money, and not a peep since beyond periodic inquiries asking if we have more cars we want to sell. One car was two years old, sold for more than we paid for it, the two others were over four years old with some wear and tear and a small but complex dent (which we disclosed and they didn’t have an issue with).
One older truck went via Craigslist to a family that didn’t quibble much about the price but netted us a very fair return (although I now wish I had kept that one).
And a newer truck that replaced the one just above went for a fair price to a wanna-be small CarMax like outfit that is starting to get more traction (EchoPark). The offered price that was honored was almost ten percent over anyone else’s offer and looking at their site showed it was resold in less than a week for more money, albeit not much more.
“Specialty” cars like yours that are more sleepers or semi-undiscovered-gems I think these days would do far better on something like BringATrailer. There aren’t enough people out there via the normal channels that know that an SE-R is not just a regular Sentra. And they’re rare enough now that they aren’t really in mind for most people looking for something small and sporty as compared to a GTI or Civic Si for example.
I’m glad to hear you sold it semi-locally instead of FL man or NY man!
Ellis Brooks was (is?) a long time Chevy dealer in downtown San Francisco. They must have sold this used, and as far as I know were the only or last place to still use metal dealer tags in California which were NOT at all common in CA even back in the 1980s.
That’s very interesting and am not sure I can explain that. The Carfax verifies that I was the third owner and that the original owner had it from new. I’m not entirely sure when the name changed from Ellis Brooks Chevrolet to Ellis Brooks Auto Center after picking up other brands or what those other brands were. However, I can’t find any evidence that they sold Nissan’s prior to when Roger Penske bought the building in 2011 and turned it into a Nissan/Infiniti dealership…
NPR has a post re Ellis Brooks, they sold Chevrolets (Chevrolets only, as far as I am aware and when I was living there) until 2008 when they gave that up and transitioned to used cars only before giving that up as well.
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/97920799
There’s even an Ellis Brooks channel on YouTube with individual ads for maybe 50 used cars. I didn’t see your car 🙂
The “chef’s kiss” has to though be the dealer badge being on…crooked. Sometimes a cigar IS just a cigar, however sometimes it surely is not….
Great car, I had the same engine in my Infiniti G20. Good times.
Yes, Ellis Brooks was Chevy only.
Yes, Ellis Brooks was Chevy only.
I forgot to mention that the reason I didn’t do BringATrailer or its ilk is that with 175k miles, the car would have had to go as No Reserve. I wasn’t willing to take that risk.
Cars & Bids seems to be doing a decent job of imitating BAT without BATs limitations. https://carsandbids.com/
Adam, I feel kind of bad that I wasn’t able to buy it from you and save you this trouble back when we communicated about this after your article 2 years ago. Fortunately, you have salvaged the situation with a great article.
My experience selling cars closely follows dman’s comment. I gave away my last one that needed to go (the Highlander Hybrid) and spent any effort I put into it doing the due diligence to get a nice tax deduction (that, since I arranged my own donation wasn’t quite as simple as going the NPR route). Other than that, it’s been trading between family members or just giving cars away to acquaintances who needed them. Come to think of it, the last time I sold one outright may have been selling the SE-R several decades ago. That was a Craigslist thing, kinda sketchy, but it went ok.
I think that since nearly all 1-1 sales seem to involve some sort of online interaction nowadays, the real problem here is the hellscape of idiocracy that the online world (anything involving so-called social media) has become.
I btw agree with Mrs. JPC about private sales in our current time. My ability to trust random strangers has greatly diminished over the last 10 years or so.
Hi Jeff. I was hoping that would work out as well. If I remember correctly, though, your best offer was……wait for it…..$5,000 :-).
For me, it wouldn’t have been about the mileage – since I recently bought a 175,000 mile vehicle for well over $5000 – but more about cash on hand and whether I needed (which is another way of saying that others in my household could bear) another vehicle in the driveway.
I do hope that your SE-R eventually wound up with someone who’ll enjoy it.
Very cool. Do tell.
This sounds like a pretty standard selling experience unfortunately. Especially trying to sell a niche car in better than average condition. I am really do not follow the reasoning of the folks that ask “is it avaliable” then disappear forever. Are they keeping tabs on the local inventory? Need a hobby? I just don’t understand.
The same thing happens for everything online in my experience, not just cars. Most recently, I spent a few months (thankfully, I had other things to do as well…) trying to give away some back yard swing set parts on FB marketplace. The number of people who responded to the listings with “Is it still available?” and then went totally silent once I said “Yes” were countless. I don’t get it either.
That certainly isn’t a pleasant selling experience but they’re not all like that. Seems like you just need someone to show up in person.
I had issues with weirdos when trying to sell my ragged old 300ZX where people kept contacting me telling me they’d owned the car before with stories that did kinda check out and I should just give it to them for free. I also had someone ask me to give it to them for free as a getaway car. The first person to show up in person bought it.
I think they get excited when they see something/anything, then ask, then when it IS available, they go and ask the person who really matters and who they should have asked first, i.e. their wife or husband, and get a “hell no we don’t need or want that”. And then they move on…
The best way to get rid of free backyard swing set parts is to have an ad that says “free metal” and you’ll have beatup pickup trucks with large trailers circling your area for the next week like flies on roadkill. But the stuff WILL be gone very fast.
Second best way is to add a price. If there’s a cost, especially a low one that makes it a “deal”, it’s automatically much more desirable… Free stuff is just garbage.
Actually, I knew that, and had a $5 price. I learned long ago that “free” just encourages weirdos who have nothing better to do than to say that they’re coming to get something and then just blow you off.
I did eventually “sell” it to a Grandpa in a pickup truck who said that his wife (presumably Grandma) made him come get it for the grandkids.
Not exactly what I’d want to count on for selling a car.
Well, I did drive 25 miles last night to pick up two “Free” excellent condition Jeep Wrangler Rubicon wheels (in boxes!) that match what our Jeep has on it…And it was on FM – I was enroute within five minutes and arrived exactly on time when I said i would. I think they were a little surprised to see me. But everything went as advertised and the guy’s Garage Mahal filled with immaculate Harleys was something to behold. It gave me a little faith again. People selling stuff on FM are often just as sketchy as those purportedly buying…Mainly though people with semi-focused photos of their car taken while getting gas on a rainy or snowy night always missing the one angle you knew you needed to see…
Selling cars on line can be a headache. I sold one car, my ’96 Mustang GT in December of ’24. Then in 2025 I sold my ’04 Navigator and a couple of months later sold my ’96 Riviera. The asking prices were not that high, and I was expecting to deal on the price, so I set the price a bit higher than I expected to get. The young guy that bought the Mustang was very nice, but he didn’t make a lower offer as expected. I even prompted him a bit but he wouldn’t make a lower offer. The price was fair in my eyes, but haggling is part of the experience. As long as it’s respectful haggling. My kids later told me that many young people don’t like to haggle over price, who knew?
The young guy that bought my Navigator was super excited to buy it, he’d wanted one for a long time. Ever since he was a kid and saw the Ice Cube movie, “Are we there yet?” He showed up in a late model little Mercedes so I knew that he had the money. He did make an offer, and since I knew that there aren’t a lot of buyers willing to pay more than bottom feeder prices for big old luxury SUVs, even ones in nice shape, I was glad to make the deal.
The kid who bought the Riviera was a bit odd, however he was excited about the car, and gave me the old, “I’ve only got XX amount of money ( less than I was asking) but I’ve got it in cash! Close enough! and it was gone. I guess that I can’t get enough of buying and selling.
Last year I bought two vehicles, one my ’46 Plymouth off CL, and my ’06 Sportster off of Facebook marketplace. The Plymouth was in southern California and took a couple of weeks to arrange a meeting, but it went off well. The seller was an older gent who appeared to be a lot more trusting than I was of strangers, but we met at a shopping center and closed the deal at a local bank. The Sporty was a lien sale from a small tow company in Oakland, and the seller was in no hurry to sell it, He had only so much time available to show and sell it, and that resulted in a big rush on my part to go see the bike, go home to get the money, rent a trailer, and get back and close the deal. He said that he had a buyer that was on their way from out of town and would only hold the bike for me until that evening. Maybe so, maybe no, but he was very nonchalant about selling it. It was worth all the hassles, I got a beautiful bike with very low mileage at a very good price, so no complaints.
I’m taking a break from this activity for a while.
When one is a gearhead, it is easy to think everyone is nuts about cool cars with manual transmissions. Nothing could be further from the truth. I recently read that only 13% of drivers in North America can drive a manual transmission. That means 87% of all parties interested in your car will bail because it isn’t an automatic.
I sold my 2006 Chevrolet Aveo on CL. It took ten weeks to fined a buyer. This was on a lease takeover of $195 a month, with no down payment. It should have been an easy transaction and the guy who eventually took it was the only person expressing any interest.
For my 2008 Honda Fit it took three months. I had exactly one bite in Vancouver and it was a guy from Victoria who finally took it.
Recently, our son told me that his 02 BMW was running a bit on the hot side but not pegging the needle. I checked the coolant, which was low and topped it off. A friend suggested (since my son was tired of the 330ci manual anyway) that I sell it out right. I don’t know why, but I thought that might not be in my best interest. So, now needing a car, the wife and I decided that we needed 4 wheel drive given that our driveway is at a 19 degree angle and we get snow. She also was done with our 1997 Astro conversion van.
I found a nice 17 Explorer Sport and asked if the dealer would take both cars on trade. He agreed.
So he sent his mechanic with me to drive both cars back to his place. The Astro drove perfectly and the BMW pegged the temp needle at hot in ten minutes! I called the dealer to explain that the BMW wasn’t a car I drove and that I didn’t know it would overheat. He still wanted to close the deal, so we had the car towed in.
I’m so thankful I didn’t try to sell either on my own.
Doing some research I saw that your car, in excellent condition, would be around $8K today. Now how mileage figures into excellent I’m not quite sure but if I had to guess excellent means lower than yours. However, when your starting point wasn’t very strange. Out my way most cars, one would want are about 25% higher than their worth. Basically a Grade 2 price for a clear Grade 3 car. There was a Cougar similar to mine and it was 100% over what mine is worth.
I’m continually flummoxed by those who need transportation but make things so hard for the sellers .
Luckily I’m in the extreme South West so rust isn’t an issue and as long as the engine is good I know I can keep it running long past 200,000 miles .
I used to build and curbstone used cars, I only ever had a few jerks, I simply told them no deal goodbye.
No wonder the junkyards are filled with what I think are perfectly good used cars ! .
-Nate
HI ADAM
HI ADAM.
Glad you’re enjoying the car – it looks great! I forwarded the link to the guy I bought it from. He’s a little upset about the mods, but he’s a stickler for orginality.
…and sorry about the cruise control 🙂
ITS OEM+
tell him the car couldn’t have gone to a better person that knows and appreciate these cars