Dear Alex,
I have owned my MG Midget for more than 15 years but now find it too difficult to get into or drive. I put it for sale on eBay; it had 1,000 views and many watchers, but not a single bid. I reduced the price by almost half but the result was the same. I think the problem is that the car is considerably modified and therefore doesn’t appeal to classic car buyers – for the same reason, I didn’t think it worth listing with the MG Owners’ Club. What should I try next?
– BP
Dear BP,
I wouldn’t consider the modification to be too much of an impediment, especially on a Midget. It’s true that a lot of classic car owners prize originality but a growing number like modified examples, too, and Midget owners tend not to be averse to a bit of a racy makeover.
The photo you enclosed shows that your car looks great – de-bumpered, with a two-tone red-over-white paint job, a roll bar and wearing Minilite alloy wheels. It looks like an ideal fast road car, or an affordable way to compete in sprints or hill climbs.
In my experience, eBay can be a difficult place to sell a car – I’ve tried selling on several occasions and found most potential buyers are looking for stone-cold bargains, or to haggle down the price. It’s not the place I’d expect to easily sell a tidy classic such as yours.
Instead, I’d try Car & Classic, an increasingly well-known classified ad and auction site specifically for classic cars (as the name suggests). There are plenty of modified examples of classics on sale there, so the audience shouldn’t find it too ‘alternative’.
I’d also try some MG owners’ groups on Facebook; you might imagine the MG crowd would be a bit anti, but actually there are plenty of younger classic car owners using these groups who I reckon might be interested at the right price.
Lastly, it’s worth placing an advert in the MG owners’ magazine. Not every owners’ club member is a stickler for originality and you may well find an enthusiast who’s looking for something a bit less original to enjoy on the road, to complement the immaculate stock example they own already. Good luck with the sale.
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