Should I sell the car or trade it in?

I have a 2001 Ford Focus SE wagon. It has about 178,000 miles on it. Yesterday, I went to two dealerships. One told me I wasn't going to get much for it but would not give me an estimate. The other one I went to told me that it was in good shape but because of the year and mileage that it still would not be worth much.

We were thinking about setting our own price and selling it ourselves. What would be the better deal - selling it ourselves or trading it in?

Sell it yourself.
You should get $800 or more for it.

Those two dealerships were mostly honest.

A dishonest dealer will give you more for it but will set you up with a loan for the new car that you will regret. They'll want to get your old car so that when you find out how bad the loan is, and say, "I'm not having this! Take back the new car and give me my old car back," they can say, "Sorry, it's sold and crushed." You'll be stuck with the bad loan.

Sell your car for $0.01 lol

Sell it yourself. A dealer will offer you a few hundred bucks so they can sell it and still make a profit.

You almost always get a better deal by doing the work yourself.

Trading in a car at the dealer is a convenience but that convenience costs you. The only real benefit to a trade in, aside from the convenience, is that the trade-in value of the car goes toward the purchase price of the new vehicle before tax so you end up paying less in tax. But if these dealers only offer you a token amount, that doesn't really make any difference.

Selling the car yourself can sometimes be a hassle but if the car is in good shape, it will likely be snapped up pretty quickly. There's always a demand for older vehicles that are still road-worthy.

If you have the time, sell it yourself. To be honest with you, 99-04 Focus models have a very poor track record and I wouldn't touch one with a ten foot pole.

Selling it outright is always better. But still even then its worth no more than a 1000 to 1500.

The one that was going to offer trade would be giving you the amount of wiggle room he had on the newer car you want to buy. He would probably give you the same discount if you did not even have a trade. A car of that age and mileage will not move on the dealers lot so they will offer little or nothing. Buy your new or newer car and then sell the old one privately. Or keep it for kicking around when you have a dirty job to do and don't want to mess up the new car. We have a 96 MPV that we use primarily just for camping trips. It is solid and reliable, but not worth much.