One of the single most valuable tools to keep resale up on your Viper or any other car,is not to assume because you saw a car go super cheap that that defines a market. A Forum can be it's own worst enemy , as the same folks who swear they know of a car that went for X, want Y plus when they sell it. In many cases they never saw the actual car that supposedly someone stole, nor do they have any actual proof the car actually did go for that. Amazing how many Ebay Vipers are never picked up, for example. The other task that one finds difficult to explain, is why owner's will drop the price of their car within a week or even days after their initial price offering. Please note that 50-90K cars do not sell overnight, so patience is the key. Once you start complaining about your car not selling, and dropping your price, vultures circle the Forums waiting for you to wilt and reduce your price again. Please learn to not be your own worst enemy, and be comfortable in the fact that a high quality , exotic will normally take months to sell ( nothing new here ). As an individual you are also hampered by potential financing issues, if the customer is not the highly sought after cash buyer. Vipers are still low numbered , hand built cars, and surprisingly, the super clean ones are actually becoming harder to find. What we find is the most important items buyers will be looking for are:
1. Color
2. Miles
3. Limited availability -either a unique car, or one that had a short color run
4. Condition
5. Warranty
These are not all of the criteria, nor are they in order, but it is not unusual to see cars that are sought after ( say a 1996 GTS for example ) to be all over the Galaxy on price. Is 42,000 a fair price , while 52,000 is too much on this vehicle? Absolutely not, if the higher price one is a super low mile garage Queen, and the other one is a high mileage track model. The resale , overall, for Vipers has stayed up better than virtually all exotics and semi-exotics, and the answer is quite simple ( and surprisingly non-emotional ) - they don't build hardly any. Dealers and customers alike will pay more for a 500 mile 2 year old Viper, over a 7,000 mile similar car, as we all seem to want that hardly used Snake, whether we intend it to be a garage queen or a daily driver.
Best advice I can give if you want to keep the value up, is not to Toot your horn if you buy one super low, because when you want to sell it, everybody knows what you paid, and human nature means everyone wants it to be lower than where you started. You also devalue everyone else's car, as they just start assuming this is the new norm. This is often completely erroneous, as many cars that go for what seem to be low prices are damaged goods ( wrecked, washed titles, buybacks, etc ). Though owners are not always aware of this, some are, but the price is all we see. We can all be our own worst enemies, but the value of a car is based on perception more often than fact, and the facts are that two cars with similar miles can be reasonably apart on price due to condition or color alone.
Get your Snake, be patient if you want to sell it, and keep your purchase to yourself, as the one you hurt is often yourself. Just my humble opinion, but hang in there , you have a very limited automobile by World's standards, and many lust after it, just like you have.
