Selling a car with replaced engine that has more miles than the car itself

gondoxx

I need to sell a car on behalf of a family member. It's a very lightly used 2009 Camry SE with a bit of a story.

About 3 years ago the car had 30k miles on it. It was left sitting in a driveway for a long time, and another family member took out for a long drive without first checking fluid levels. Turns out the car had no coolant AND had a broken radiator thermometer AND was low on oil. Wound up blowing the engine. We worked with a reputable mechanic who found a used 2009 Camry engine that had 77k miles on it with a 6 month / 6000 mile warrantee.

In the 3 years since we've put another 8k miles on the car, no mechanical problems whatsoever.

So now we want to sell it. I intend to advertise it as having 85k miles, using the engine mileage, despite the fact that the odometer reads 38k. I've already got CarFax reports on the car and on the engine.

I'm trying to figure what's the best way to portray the situation to prospective buyer. I'm optimistically hoping to get book value for the car as if it had 85k miles without the engine replacement, but I'm sure the whole sordid tale is going to scare people away.

Any suggestions?

isellhondas

Very interesting. You are trying to be 100% honest and transparent here. I would simply tell the truth to prospective buyers. If you are looking for "book" value I would use the mileage for your calculation based on the miles that are on the replacement engine. as you plan to do. Therefore they are actually getting a bonus since the rest of the car's components have about 40,000 miles less. For some shoppers any little thing can scare them and "queer" the sale. Others wont care. best of all, it's a Toyota and most shoppers know they are very reliable cars.

Just lay out the facts. I'm just wondering why the shop didn't just rebuild the existing 30,000 mile engine?

gondoxx

They didn't rebuild it because they estimated the cost to do that was more than replacing with a used engine.

mb_enthusiast

I would just do a trade-in/sell-to-dealer.