850 smarts for sale on military.com

[jwight]

Just checking to see if any were listed - never expected to see that many listed for sale. Smart Cars For Sale - Military.com Classifieds

[Karl Roth]

The circumstances that made them such a market darling less than a year ago have changed. When we loose half a million jobs in a month people start asking themselves should I hold on to this for a while...
karl

[forestacademy]

It looks like a lot of them are sitting at Car dealers who thought they could make a quick buck on the Smart, and are now sitting on them upside down.

And how is this a Smart?




http://www.powercarsearch.com/detail.aspx?id=104951

Some had Kids since they ordered the Car.

[Fredvon4]

hummm and perhaps crude being $39 per barrel, 87 at $1.299 or 91 at $1.549 per gallon has an effect too...

[sheraldyne]

During my earlier quest for a Honda Insight I found that 90% of the online ad's like these were bogus they just wanted you to call the dealer so a "salesman" could talk you into something different. And the VIN's were either duplicates or for completely different cars!
I actually had one salesman apologize for wasting my time, he said marketing thought it was a good idea.... LOL

[tabevan2052]

Looks like almost all the sales are from other sites. They must be linking for a fee!

[tblackley]

I did some quick research on a couple of these cars. It appears that there is a lot of trading of smarts among dealers (from trade in). I found a VIN from one of them and googled it. It popped up for a number of dealers. The car history had 7 entries (trading across dealers). You may be able to find some of the dealers that the car was at as some of the old ads still exists on the web. You get a sense that many of these cars are spec cars where their prices are above the MSRP. They are all looking for a buck.

Anyway, I am thinking that there are many duplicates on these listings as different internet car sales sights are scrapping other sale sights for their own listings. I don't think any meaning full meaning can be pulled from the total count alone.

[BigWarpGuy]

It would be a great place for some one to get a Smart car without having to wait?

[jwight]

Even if 50% of the entries are bogus, that would be over 400 smarts listed - still a lot.

[Alchemy R]

Yeah, these are all pulled from various sites.

It doesn't seem like a lot to me since it is spread across the entire country... that's only like 8/state.

As far as the dealers sitting on them goes... that's true. The in-house financing at the auctions is no longer allowing Smarts to be floored. I've been bidding on them at auction but won't go above whatever I set my price at and have only gotten one for a decent price. That one has been added to my rental fleet.

I was high bidder on another one but didn't get it as the selling dealer wanted about $3000 more than the max I would bid.