Ask the expert: How should I sell my wheelchair-accessible vehicle?
Dear Alex,
What is the best approach to replacing a wheelchair-accessible vehicle (WAV) with a small car, say a Toyota or a Kia? Is it better to sell the WAV to a specialist company, to trade it in at a Toyota or Kia main dealer, or try one of the specialist firms that buys used cars?
– HT
Dear HT,
It can be quite tricky to get the best price for a WAV, because a lot of dealers are wary about their ability to sell them on.
Obviously, WAVs are essential for a select group of buyers, but of little interest to others, which limits their resale potential.
As with any car, you’ll always get the best price by selling privately through a classified ad. However, I would use a national platform such as Auto Trader or eBay rather than a more locally focused platform such as Facebook Marketplace or Gumtree, as people looking for a WAV are more likely to be willing to travel to find the right car, given their relative rarity.
If you don’t want the hassle of selling the car yourself, you can try using Motorway or We Buy Any Car. However, the prices they offer you will be driven by dealers; if none of the dealers using those platforms is interested, you might not fetch a very high price.
I’d therefore suggest you obtain a value via these sites to give you a rough idea of the bare minimum you can achieve. Then, having done so, approach a few dealers which specialise in WAVs. They will probably want to see the car to give it a proper valuation, but it’s worth doing so because they might be willing to offer you more than you’d get on Motorway or We Buy Any Car – and if they don’t, you at least have those earlier valuations to fall back on.
You can try a straight part-exchange for your next car, of course – but I don’t think you’ll get the best price doing so. I imagine most dealers won’t want to retail a car like that, so it’ll get passed to one of their associated traders – and given that those probably won’t include a WAV specialist, I suspect the price you’ll be offered will be fairly low.
