1. The old Corolla that started it all

I’d had the same silver Corolla sitting out the front of my place in Melbourne’s west for years. It had done the school runs, late-night Macca’s stops and a few long trips up the Hume. Eventually the rego ran out, the air con packed it in, and the mechanic quietly told me it wasn’t worth sinking any more money into.

I wasn’t ready to just let it sit there and rust, so I figured I’d see if I could squeeze a bit of value out of it. In my head, I had two choices: sell it privately and hope someone wanted a fixer-upper, or go with a car removal service and be done with it in one hit.

2. Selling privately: low offers and a lot of waiting

My first move was to list it online. I put it on Marketplace and Gumtree with plenty of photos and a detailed description, trying to be upfront about its issues. Within an hour my phone started buzzing. At first I thought I was onto something, but most of the messages were either:

• “What’s your lowest price?” with no hello
• People wanting to swap random items
• Or no-shows after setting a time to come around

One bloke turned up, poked around the engine bay for two minutes and then tried to cut my price in half. Another couple wanted to take it for a test drive, even though I’d clearly said it wasn’t registered and hadn’t passed a roadworthy in years. By the end of the first week I’d spent hours messaging, sending extra photos and waiting at home, with nothing to show for it but frustration.

It slowly dawned on me that most of the serious buyers were only interested in car scrapping, and they were pricing it like metal on a scale, not like something that had any use left in it. The gap between what I thought it was worth and what they were willing to pay was pretty wide.

3. Trying car removal instead: one phone call and done

After a couple of weeks of that circus, a mate at work asked why I hadn’t just sorted car removal for cash in the first place. I’d always pictured that as something you only did for wrecked cars, but he’d used it for his old ute and reckoned it was much less hassle than selling privately.

I jumped online during lunch, filled in a quote form with the make, model, year and rough condition, and got a call back within half an hour. The offer wasn’t life-changing, but it was higher than any serious private offer I’d had, and it included pickup and paperwork. No advertising, no strangers coming to the house, no need to organise a roadworthy or renew the rego.

On pickup day the truck arrived roughly when they said it would. The driver checked the VIN, had a quick look around the car and stuck to the original figure. I grabbed my ID, signed a couple of forms, took off the plates and that was it. Watching the Corolla get winched up onto the truck felt strangely satisfying – like finally ticking off a job I’d been putting off for months.

I’d also asked what actually happened to the car afterwards. The driver explained that the metal, plastics and fluids were sorted and reused where possible, part of a wider car recycling melbourne setup that keeps a lot of material out of landfill. That made me feel a bit better about letting it go, rather than just having it sit there leaking who-knows-what into the driveway.

4. So which really saved more time and money?

When I added it all up, selling privately was only worth it if I was happy to spend weeks messaging, waiting for people to show up and haggling over a few hundred dollars. On top of that, I would’ve needed to organise a roadworthy, potentially fix a couple of things the mechanic had flagged, and sort short-term rego. By the time I covered those costs, there wasn’t a lot of “profit” left.

With car removal, I didn’t get a massive payout, but it was fast and clear. No advertising costs, no time off work to meet buyers, no late-night test drives in an unregistered car, and no extra money sunk into repairs. The offer I accepted was basically “money in, problem out” on the same day.

Looking back, if the car had been newer, already registered and only needed minor work, a private sale might have made sense. But for an old, tired, unregistered car that was never going to pass a roadworthy without serious spending, the removal option easily came out ahead.

If you’re stuck with something similar sitting in your garage or on the nature strip, it’s worth being honest about how much time you’re prepared to put into selling. For me, once I’d tried both paths, the answer was clear: less stress, fewer random messages and a quick pickup beat weeks of chasing the “perfect buyer” every time.