Tag Archives: gretel

Cars

Gretel is gone. Long live Gretel

I SOLD THE 2006 X3 yesterday. Cash. For the asking price. Without a test drive.

I met up with the couple that bought the car. They said, “We have the money if you have the title.” I offered a test drive, and the woman half of the couple said, “You drove it here.” The easiest car sale ever.

We have sold three cars via CraigsList in the last several years with great success. Here’s what I did this time:

Pricing. I looked for the same model car on several used car sites, filtering for total mileage just on either side of my car. I found 26, which I put into a spreadsheet and averaged prices and miles and calculated my car’s price accordingly. Twenty-six people selling a BMW X3 in the SE United States can’t all be crazy on pricing, so I figured that was a good exercise in crowd sourcing. I assumed the asking prices had some negotiating room built in. I read a used car selling guide once that made the claim ending prices with $~75 looks much more like a real person that a dealer pricing at $~99, so the price became $5,975.

Pictures. I’m an avid photographer, so wasn’t concerned about taking pictures until the Nikon DSLR seemed to have died and then the battery died on the Canon camcorder I used in still shot mode. So, most of the pictures ended up being from an iPhone. Not the best tool for the job – but it obviously didn’t hurt things! I had googled for tips on pictures for selling used cars, and only one thing popped up that was new and intriguing. The suggestion was to photograph the dash by moving the front seats back and fully reclining them. I thought that picture worked out rather sell, despite being shot with the phone.

Text. I followed all the tips in articles I found about writing effective used car ads. That seemed to have worked, too. I suspect that people believe if you are honest about the flaws then you must be telling the truth about the rest.

Timing. I posted the ad on Friday night, having kept the weekend pretty free. The idea being I don’t have to spend week days dealing with people who won’t come look until the weekend anyway. (This has worked three times now!) Then, I can see a lot of people who saw a brand new ad.

I’ve shared the story before about the “Gretel” name. I bought a 2015 BMW X1 in January, so I’ve wanted to sell Gretel since then. I’ve been calling the X1 Helga to avoid confusion, but with the departure of Gretel 2.0 yesterday, Helga gets elevated to her reignal name of Gretel. Is that 3.0 or maybe “just” 2.x-something since this car is also an X-drive vehicle? Thoughts?

Gretel is gone. Long live Gretel.

PS I bought Gretel 3-1/2 years ago for $7,000. I’m pleased!

Cars

Saturdate with Gretel

YOU MIGHT be wondering who Gretel is. I do too; It’s confusing. Hmmm. Perhaps I should start at the beginning…

The summer of 2009, Melissa, Sean and I were in the rental car parking garage at the Munich airport. I had reserved a car with GPS (Navi or SatNav depending on which country my friends are from). Everyone knows what the GPS looks like, right? I was feeling pretty stupid because I couldn’t find it. I asked for help. The GPS was the size of a postage stamp and located in the rear view mirror. Yes, in the mirror. It turns out that she only spoke German. I was OK with “Die Route wird berechnet” but most people wouldn’t know what was going on. Eight years later Melissa still say “Rechts abbiegen” but I’m not entirely sure it’s actually part of her German vocabulary.

We listened to this German voice telling us “turn left” and “turn right” for several days. We eventually started referring to the voice as “Gretel.” Spring forward a few years to 2011. A friend at EUCOM found an abandoned GPS, used it for a short time, then gave it to me. It was made in 1996. The most recent maps are several years out of date. (OK for city-to-city trips, but when downtown has become a pedestrian zone, “she” goes crazy. Ask me how I know!) This little black box took on the Gretel name. Gretel was useful in the gold 1992 BMW station wagon (Combi, Touring, Estate Car depending on where you live). She returned to the US in 2013.

Gretel is on the way back from a Christmas 2015 trip to see one of my bothers and his family in Bavaria.
Gretel is on the way back from a Christmas 2015 trip to see one of my bothers and his family in Bavaria.

Gretel served faithfully in the US until heading back to Europe late in 2015. Gretel’s new car was a blue 1999 BMW station wagon (Same alternate vocab for the rest of the world). Somehow, Gretel’s name migrated from the GPS to the car itself. As most of my friends know, that car was replaced by a silver 2003 BMW station wagon several months ago. The name has moved on so the current car has become known as Gretel 2.0.

Yesterday, I spent five hours replacing the parking brakes (who thought it was a good idea to put drum brakes inside disk brakes just to park a car?) and rotors and pads on all four axles. The car stops. The parking brake is firmer. I’m happy.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of my Saturdate with Gretel. The next installment in the continuing saga will be replacing the valve cover gasket because 1) oil leaks are not allowed in Germany and 2) that occasional bit of oil on the exhaust manifold does not smell good.

Gretel 1.0's hood emblem was old and faded. I bought her a new one. Later, I was offered a really nice used one. When G 2.0 joined the family, the new one replaced her awful one, and the good used on went on G 1.0; those things are too expensive to leave on a car when it's sold!
Gretel 1.0’s hood emblem was old and faded. I bought her a new one. Later, I was offered a really nice used one. When G 2.0 joined the family, the new one replaced her awful one, and the good used on went on G 1.0; those things are too expensive to leave on a car when it’s sold!