Itr909

I'm currently in the market for a clean title 1999-03 CL-S 6speed. What do you guys think would be a fair price considering I'm in California looking for a clean title and preferably unmodified CLS?

jkmccarthy

Itr909 -- I would think that mileage (not to mention how hard or gently it's been driven over those miles) and how well the car's been cared-for mechanically and cosmetically are as important as geography in determining a fair price ? (I'd be interested to hear what others think).

I just spent the last month shopping for a used 2014 or 2015 Audi A5 (2.0 L turbocharged 4-cyl) and/or S5 (3.0 L supercharged 6-cyl) 2-door coupe, and I discovered the car buying web-site Used Cars for Sale Ranked by Best Deals & Price - iSeeCars.com to be very useful in helping me judge price differences between cars of different model years and with differing numbers of miles on them. (I found the free "VIN Lookup" feature of this web site to be especially handy, as it gave me insight into how long a particular car has been listed for sale, and whether [and how many times] the price has been lowered since it was first offered for sale ... great info to have when negotiating price on a used car with a dealership, for example ....).

Anyway, I entered the VIN for my 2003 CL-S 6-spd manual, and that web site generated this snapshot of pricing for identical make + model + trim + body-style vehicles that have recently sold nationwide. (Make = Acura, Model = CL, Trim = Type S, and body-style = Coupe ... I can't say for sure if these are all 6-spd manuals, or both manuals and automatics). I also don't know for certain if the prices shown here are the ACTUAL PRICES PAID when the cars were sold (how would the web-site obtain that information??) ... so my suspicion instead is that these are the "last recorded asking price" for cars that have sold (meaning when "reality" forces sellers to reduce their asking price to attract buyers, this web site tracks those price reductions). But to me, the most interesting and useful trend demonstrated here is how price depends on the miles on the odometer. Some of the vertical spread could be due to geographic locale, in combination with mechanical condition and cosmetics. Similar plots could be generated for other model years (shown here are only 2003's ...).




Hope this helps you in your search !

Cheers,

-- Jim

jkmccarthy

FOLLOW-UP --- Still being curious whether the web site Used Cars for Sale Ranked by Best Deals & Price - iSeeCars.com was mixing Manual and Automatic transmission cars in its plot of "Recently Sold Prices" nationwide, I decided to investigate this: I went to eBay (motors) and searched for 2003 Acura CL Type S and grabbed the VIN for an automatic currently for sale, then entered that VIN into the "iseecars" web site and generated a second graph of price as a function of mileage for same "make, model, trim, body-style" recently sold cars nationwide. Result was --

IT GAVE ME AN IDENTICAL PLOT (except the car whose VIN I entered had 165,409 miles and had an eBay "Classified ad" asking price of $3,990 ... so the black dot on the graph relocated to that spot.

So my apologies ... the plot above is a MIXTURE of both manual and automatic transmission 2003 CL Type S.

Is it reasonable to assume that the 6-speed manual transmission CL Type S cars would be bring higher prices (being less common, and likely having more appeal to automobile enthusiasts as compared to automatics ?) so might be found along the top of the band of data points above, while the automatics would be the majority of the data points overall ?

Interested to hear what others think ....

-- Jim

thoiboi

Yes, very much the case, but thus is the market, there are certain cars where pricing algorithms just won't work. You have to be an informed buyer or informed seller looking for an informed buyer if you're in possession of 6speed CLS

jkmccarthy

OP Itr909 -- If you are still looking, I thought I'd bring this one (for sale in the San Diego area) to you attention in case you haven't already seen it -- seems like it would(?) fit the description of what you are/were looking for ....

https://sandiego.craigslist.org/csd/cto/5990754223.html

(I have no relation whatsoever to the seller ... I just came across the Craigslist ad above while doing more homework to determine the appropriate asking price for mine, when the time comes to offer mine for sale ...).

Cheers,

-- Jim

jkmccarthy

FYI, the craigslist ad for the above vehicle now appears to be here instead: https://sandiego.craigslist.org/csd/cto/6022025391.html ... the seller now has it listed as a 2004 [sic] but surely it must be a 2003.