My older daughter lives in California with her beloved 24-year-old car. She is planning to move to the east coast. She does not know what to do with the car. She does not want to give it up, because she thinks she might return to California relatively soon if the east coast move doesn’t work out. Her original idea was to lend the car to a friend. I said that this made me uncomfortable, because of insurance. She suggested giving it to him or selling it for a nominal amount, with the agreement that he would give back or sell back the car if she returned. We discovered that transferring title would require passing a smog test, which seems unlikely given the age of the car. She proposed driving the car back to our home in flyover country; her mechanic said it would not be a good idea to take this vehicle on another half-a-country trip. I suggested donating the car to a charity; this ran smack into the “beloved car” issue.
Any ideas? I’m still gently pushing the donation to charity proposal; it seems like the only safe and legal option but doesn’t preserve the car for future use.
I have almost 20 year old car as a backup, just in case. But I wouldn’t drive them farther than 20 miles. So I would suggest either donate or sell for a small price. I can fetch between $500-$1000 for my car but my insurance would go up $300, so that’s why I’m keeping it.
You could have it shipped home rather than driven. My friends whose D’s are in college in Texas shipped them their cars because they didn’t want them driving alone that far. They said the price was reasonable but I forget exactly how much $600 maybe?
If it doesn’t pass the smoke check then I would donate. My car passes the smoke check easily. But if it doesn’t pass the smoke check how is your daughter intend to keep it in California for future use?
She hopes the car will die a natural death before she reregisters it in California from its home state. I suggested she drive it a lot in the next few weeks, to see if it will die in a safe place (i.e, not in the desert). What can I say: some young women are very sentimental about their vehicles.
If her car has failed smog tests it may be eligible for the Calif. voluntary retirement “buy-back” program in which she would be paid $1000 to junk the car. This would of course run into the “beloved car” issue but it might be the best solution. She also might be able to “lease” the car to her friend for a nominal amount but I don’t know about the legality of that.
There are other qualifications as well. I believe the car has to be of a certain age and the owner to have tried to make repairs amounting to a minimal cost. It is an effort to get older, less efficient cars off of the road.
You should know the right people, we sold a junk car to a dealer for $1000 a few years ago.
But we don’t know such person now. He was a father of a sorority sister of one of my kid.
@rosered:
Your D may have a lot of problems with her plan, CA smog checks are the toughest around. Back when the car was new, cars often had 49 state models and 1 for CA (these days most if not all cars are 50 state, thanks to the tech under the car’s hood). If she really loves the car, then she could take it to a shop and ask them to run the smog test (back then they really ran one, these days pollution tests are dumping what is known as the OBDII computer on the car)and see what is up. It could be the car would pass, or might only take relatively minimal work to correct it (sometimes all it takes is a new O2 sensor in the exhaust, or a tune up). If it really fails, then it prob is worth junking it, especially if they still have the get the smog producers off the road campaign.
The logical thing would be the trash the car, and one thing to consider is depending on where she is going back east, she may not pass pollution testing there if she shipped it back. However, cars are not always rational, I still grieve for my old subaru wagon that my wife made me get rid of (it needed a new exhaust system and some other things, would have been pretty expensive and we had a third car that I could use as my station car) so I understand her. The key thing is to get the car evaluated, they shouldn’t charge that much to run a pollution test, so she knows what she is facing, otherwise she is just guessing.
I’ll assume this isn’t a collectible type car but rather, something like a Civic, Camry, etc.
She shouldn't 'lend' this car to a friend since she'd still have to cover it under insurance and one would need to read the fine print to see if a longer term 'lend' like this, as opposed to a random 'borrow' would even be covered by insurance. In addition, if this friend racks up some tickets and doesn't pay them your D will be on the hook for them. If something serious happens, like he gets in a wreck and injures someone else or himself, there could be ramifications for your D. If it's determined there was a maintenance issue on the car that caused the wreck - more potential issues. When the car requires the inevitable maintenance, who'll pay for it - her or the friend? If the car dies on the side of the road, he gets a ride home from a friend or Uber, and the car gets towed and ends up in a tow lot with ridiculous daily storage fees, is your D willing to pay? How will she feel if he gets into a fender bender with it and of course it doesn't get fixed since it'd cost more than the car's worth? This 'friend' can end up to be an non-friend quickly with transactions like this. It's not worth it.
(Note - I'm not a lawyer)
If the idea is for the friend to hang onto it she can sell it to him for fair market value, which likely isn’t much. If she ends up coming back and wants the car back and he’s willing to sell it back and it hasn’t wrecked or died, then she can buy it back for the same price. They’d both need to pay the sales tax, registration, etc. but this car can’t be worth that much so it won’t be a lot of money.
A car in decent shape could be driven to the midwest regardless of age. I did a coast to coast trip in an older car that had 194K miles on it but if her mechanic advises against it then she shouldn't do it and realize the implication - the car isn't mechanically sound and likely needs work, which will be a cost, perhaps a significant one. She should find out what the issues are if she really keeps the car.
If she's to keep the car long term, regardless of the method, it'll need to be maintained properly. If she's willing to do that then the car could be driven home. If not, then she should get rid of the car now.
Smog check - I have an 18 y/o vehicle with 225K miles on it that passes the smog check just fine. If the car's maintained properly it'll likely pass the smog check. Why does she think it wouldn't - did the mechanic tell her it wouldn't? She can always just take it to a 'test only' station and have it tested (will cost some money). Note that it looks like the 'failed smog buyback' is only for vehicles already registered in California so your D's car wouldn't qualify.
The most sensible thing to do is to get rid of the car and use this as an opportunity to eventually get a newer car to replace it when another car's needed. She could sell it to her friend for a fair market value but it'll be at the risk of causing an issue with the friendship if the car breaks shortly afterwards - he'll likely hold your D accountable even though she isn't. Better yet - donate it.
Just donate the car. Your D should have registered her car in CA within 20 days of her residency. She is lucky she hasn’t been ticketed. I doubt she can sell an old car not registered in CA and she shouldn’t get her friend in trouble.