I owed 12.4k on the Tacoma valued in the mid 20's. The Yaris is a 2009, which was a little older than I wanted, but had very low mileage which matters more to me. Also, the crap on the door in the 2009 doesn't bite into my knee like the 2010 I test drove, so it ended up an added bonus. I was looking at a dealer just to simplify the whole transaction. The right way to do it would've been to sell my own vehicle on my own, and then buy something from a private seller. I think I probably could have walked away with 1-1.5k extra cash doing it that way, but...
But I'd been thinking of doing that for months and didn't pull the trigger. The combination of "that's hard" and "I really love my truck" kept me postponing. So Friday morning I checked the local dealers for something I could live with that I could get a straight trade and wipe out the car payment.
The original offer of trade in on my tacoma was 20k. I camped out at the dealer all day with a list of the tacomas they were selling, all in the 23-25k range, and eventually got 23k.
Dealer paid 23k for my truck.
Charged me 10.2k for the yaris.
Charged me miscellaneous other bullshit fees.
I left with no note, no payments due, no cash, my wallet intact, and a fully paid off yaris. I think the best I could've done on my tacoma on my own was around 23.5k, the mileage was up there and the damn windshield got busted up on the way to the dealer. I think I could've also argued the yaris price down to around 9.5k, but it had taken me 6 hours to get the deal down to zero, and I'm all about just declaring victory.
But really I left with what I wanted, no car payment.
multi-vitamin, a 2012 impala ought to be worth quite a bit more than 8500, unless it's all banged up/crapped out or has tons of miles. Anything under about 80k miles I'd figure you can get at least 13k, maybe 15k. That is a very popular vehicle.
