No! not my Mazda... my other POS. It died in an interesting display yesterday with something in the electrical system shorting out and a small fire under the dash. If I was motivated to find out what it was I could go look under there... but I just made sure that there was no fire left and removed the battery from the car.

So... here is my question. Anyone ever get rid of a car that is basically not worth ****? 150k miles and it does not even run. I really do not want any money for it. I am wondering if I can just get an auto salvage place/junk yard (are they the same?) to take it off my hands? Do you usually have to pay them to remove it?

thanks!
-JJB

 

Donate it to the kidney foundation, cancer foundation, etc. They'll haul it off for free and you'll get a bit of a break on taxes too.

http://www.carsforcancer.com/
http://www.kidney.org/funds/cars.cfm

 

Absoutely - donation is worth it!

I donated a car a few years back. I could probably get only $300 for it if I sold it. But the form the charity gave me allowed me to fill in the fair market value of the car, which according to Kelley Blue Book was about $1200 (in very good shape - shich mine of course wasn't - but who's asking?).

So since tax deductions generally yield about 25% in your pocket, I got the same money for it, with no hassles of selling it.

FYI - tax deductions are like money you never made. If you claim a $1000 tax deduction, basically you get back the TAX you already paid on $1000 of your income. Averages out to about 25%. So a $1000 tax deduction gets you around a $250 tax savings or refund. Approximately.

And I donated my car to the Timothy Hill Children's Ranch. They picked it up, and left the receipt in my mailbox (I was at work) - all I had to do was leave the car unlocked and the keys in the visor (a-la; Terminator 2 ).

If not - just call any junkyard - they'll use the car for parts, so they *might* even give you a few bucks for it. Going rate around here for an undriveable car is about $40-$50, last time I junked one.

~HH

 

the only thing with donation is that the car is not running anymore (major electrical system failure) so I did not think that they would want it

Thanks for the other ideas... I'll have to call around this coming week once they get the power back on around here (lots o' ice this weekend put a lot of folks out here).

 

It doesn't matter man - almost all of these charities will take ANY car, running or not.

~HH

 

thanks for the details guys (and gal)... I checked out the links for the donation program and they will indeed take a non running car... so I think that is where it will go! Now I just have to decide which one.

 

Ooops...maybe I missed it, but what kind of car was it?

 

Chevy Beretta (V6). I got a great deal on it when the car before it died (Subaru) and was in need of wheels quick.

 

That's kind of funny, I used to have a Chevy Beretta GT ('89), and my parents inherited it after me, and they just junked it about a month ago, they got $50 for it, I thought it was a terrific deal!