Genuine Reason For Sale?

There may be a genuine reason for selling your old car, but how honest could you be in your advert?

Amongst the 1.2m privately advertised vehicles last year, used car database, Cardata.co.uk logged some rather colourful and blunt ‘reasons for sale’.

Ranging from the surreal to the hilarious, sellers used the traditional 45 words classified box to deliver some rather telling lines.

Top of the list must surely be the gentleman selling his much loved BMW M3, who simply wrote: "Car must go, wife forgot to take pill’. Or another soon-to-be Dad who advertised his pride and joy as: "Need new car. Baby due in May forces sale ie missus wont let me keep it!"

According to Cardata.co.uk, the most common phrase used in private ads is "genuine reason for sale", closely followed by the immortal "reluctant sale".

In terms of those ‘reasons why’, financial constraints often creep in. One seller informed prospective buyers: "Broke thanks to ex. Need cash quick for solicitor."

On one occasion, health came into the equation with the line - "Under Doctor’s orders, told to sell the car and get on bicycle for longer life."

Sentiment, too, plays its part including the vendor who needed to find a home for a car that has ‘been part of the best years of my life (sic)’.

Also spotted, a number of hopeful ex-owners at pains to distance themselves from driver reputations such as "Car not boyracer" and "May be an SRI, but no Sales Rep driving it". Many of the private ads were however happy to admit "only one careful lady owner".

In 2004, the private-to-private used car market was worth over £6bn.