Selling a Car That Will Not Start in St. Louis
A car that will not start is the most over-discounted vehicle there is, because nobody knows yet whether it is a battery or an engine.
Get My Two OffersMechanical · we buy it as it sits No repairs required4.8 Ballwin (294 Google reviews) 4.9 O'Fallon (95 Google reviews)
The math
Find out what it is before you accept a number for it
"Will not start" covers an enormous range, from a $150 battery to a seized engine, and the quotes you get over the phone will assume the worst end of it. That assumption is where money disappears. A car that has sat through a St. Louis winter and will not crank is very often a battery, a starter, a fuel pump or a corroded ground — all of which are modest, known repairs.
Before you sell on a worst-case assumption, it is worth the small cost of a diagnosis. If the answer is cheap, you can either fix it and sell a running car for meaningfully more, or at least negotiate from a known position instead of an unknown one. Either way you stop being quoted as a dead engine when you have a dead battery.
If the diagnosis is bad, nothing is lost — the car is worth what a non-runner is worth, and we buy those. The asymmetry runs entirely in your favour: a cheap answer is worth a lot and an expensive answer costs you almost nothing to learn.
How the offer gets built
How a no-start car gets appraised
Known cause beats unknown cause every time. A diagnosed fault is priced; an undiagnosed one has to be priced for risk.
Electrical and fuel-delivery faults are cheap for us to resolve and barely move the number.
Suspected internal engine failure is the expensive end, and we will say so rather than quietly assuming it.
How long it has sat matters. Months of sitting brings flat spots, seized brakes and fuel issues along with it.
Body, interior and title are appraised normally regardless of why it will not run.
Straight talk
When we are not your best option
If a mechanic tells you it is a battery, a starter or a relay, fix it and sell a running car — the repair is small and the value gap between running and non-running is not. We would rather you did that and came back with a car that drives onto the lot. It is worth more to you and to us.
Two offers, one visit
You still get both numbers
Instant Cash Offer
A firm number, good for 7 days, with the fault priced at our repair cost rather than a retail shop's estimate.
How the cash offer worksProfit-Sharing
A reserve check up front, then a second check for your share once we have sorted the car out and sold it at retail.
How profit sharing pays moreKeep reading
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