Sorry about your father, assuming your parents had you at around the same age mine did, it was too soon for him.
You can list the car in more places than just the one. Personally, I'd go with facebook marketplace because it's free and ebay motors over gumtree, because both ebay and gumtree charge upfront to list a car, but ebay motors gets more traffic. I'm not sure what carsales charges, but the last time I sold a car it was about $50 or $60 on ebay. That said, ebay currently has a $0 fees promo, so you can list it for free there at the moment.
Here are my "credentials" lol. I buy
a lot of too many cars. I currently own 20, with 12 of them being VT - VZ Commodores of various flavours, and I previously owned a VS as well. A lot of the cars I buy I do so sight unseen, as in, I've only seen them online, not in person, so I have to be super observant when purchasing. What I look for when buying another car is the following:
First up, is there anything special about it? In your case, no, but I don't mean that in a bad way, I just mean that there's always limited editions in the V series range, which are traditionally worth a few bucks more due to their rarity, but going by the NSW Rego Check service, it's a base model ute. However, it's a V8 and V8s are worth more than V6s.
Clearly your old man didn't drive it overly much in the past few years - 17,000km in 2022 is pretty average, but only 1,600km in 2023 is practically nothing, and being NSW rego, they are verifiable kms, which is a selling point. For a car of that age, 250,000km is quite low anyway. My car is a VX and came out at the same time and it's done 400,000+kms.
It has almost a full year's rego, which if it's close to roadworthy is a bonus for any purchaser. Don't bother cashing in the rego. Because of the compulsory TAC component (which you don't get refunded) you won't get its face value back, so it's worth more to you as a selling point.
I've looked at your photos. What's the interior like? Are the seat covers worn out, are bits broken like the seat back adjustment wheel on the side of the drivers seat (super common)? Are some of the lights out on the climate control or cluster? Is it clean? If it's not generally pretty clean, get it detailed. Nobody likes a car with somebody else's grime ingrained in the door handle and gear shift, etc. Was your father a smoker?
Is the tray in good condition or has it seen a lot of heavy scratchy stuff that's taken the paint off and allowed it to start to rust?
I can tell from the alignment of the doors that it has most likely never been in an accident. The ding in the side looks like what I call a "trolley ding" - caused by some comparably light, slow moving object, like a trolley in a carpark, so not a big deal. The one in the tailgate is a bit of a pity, but it looks like a "bollard ding" to me, which is exactly what it sounds like (we've all done it). None of the dings look like potentially frame-damaging car vs car events.
The clear is peeling off in a number of places, but that's pretty par for course on VT/VU/VX models now.
How clean is the engine bay? Is it covered in dirt and grime? Buy some bulk degreaser from Supercheap and Kaarcher it, especially if it's red dirt (your engine bay doesn't get covered in red dirt in the suburbs...)
You have four matching tyres with a decent amount of meat still on them and some nice rims. And they're all the same size! I bought a car once with three different sized wheels on it. No, I don't know why it was like that.
The wind deflectors are both still on it and unbroken, which is pretty impressive for a 23 year old car.
Does the aircon blow cold?
The tray cover is in good nick and the tradie bars and towbar are a nice bonus (I've always found tow bars on utes weird. Like isn't the tray for carrying things? How much sh1t are you trying to move that you need to drag a trailer around too??).
Does it drive straight? If you let go of the steering wheel for a few seconds do you stay on course, or do you end up sideways in the opposite lane?
Here's a weird one - if you grip the steering wheel, does the rubber cover twist if you try and move it towards the windscreen? That will prevent the new owner getting a roadworthy. There's a way to reliably fix it, I do it and sell them on ebay, or you can just leave it as is and they'll have to pay me $180 on ebay for one .
It doesn't look like any lights are cracked.
Short of seeing the interior and engine bay, I wouldn't want to name a price, but somebody just sold their
trashed looking V6 skid ute (they freely admit it was their skids car) without rego and a bunch of stuff that'll need fixing for a roadworthy for $2K on ebay. Someone else just sold
their VU that needs a new clock spring and rather more significantly,
a new engine because they blew their head gasket, for $1075 on ebay as well. Even without seeing the interior and engine bay, I can promise you that yours is worth more than those prices.
Finally, here's a little ⬆⬆⬇⬇⬅➡⬅➡ BA for you - call up a handfull of car insurers. They will tell you the "market value" of your car, then add a few $ because yours seems to be in better than standard condition. That's a reasonable idea of the ballpark you're playing in. Do not list it as a deceased estate, nor mention that your father has passed away, because people tend to assume that it is therefore surplus to your needs and that you're looking to get rid of it asap, and subconsciously they won't be satisfied until they've beaten you down to what
they think you should be selling it for, given the circumstances. Always list it for more than what you're looking for "OBO", because people feel really good if they can barter you down to a cheaper price. Post the interior and engine bay photos if you want and good luck with it.
photos.app.goo.gl
