Ok so we do like our TCH quite a bit but with my wife's job she is piling on the miles...so we are thinking of trading it in. We have a White 07 TCH loaded (leather, nav etc) with nearing 45k miles...what is it worth? KBB and Nada don't have anything...KBB doesn't have the car and NADA while having the car when you input all the info it says N/A for the price.

Thoughts? I am guessing they hold their value better than a similar gas Camry?

 

Not sure about yours but stevenvillatoro had his listed here with ~22K miles (working from memory here) for $28.5K with similar equipment. It's sold now, but I'm not sure it was disclosed what it sold for. I think this was in California.

I live in MN and paid that for a brand new loaded TCH. NADA usually is at ~ $.09 per mile so I would guess you'd be taking a $4K hit (at least) depending on your location and the availability of TCH's.

Best bet would be to head to a dealer to get an idea of trade-in - add a couple grand and that's probably pretty close to market value.

Good luck!

Scott

 

Sounds about where I had guessed...I was thinking about $24k but it was just a WAG. My fear with going to a dealer is that with no basis out there they can tell me it is worth whatever they want...I don't really want to go to a bunch of dealers and jerk them around asking what they would give us with no real intention of buying a car from them...thus my question here.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

A 2007 TCH at 45k miles is still a young car -- Why replace it? Just maintain it well (please replace the ATF - Tranny fluid - every 60k miles in addition to Toyota' suggested maintenance) and it should easily go 200k miles with few problems - especially as your wife is a high mileage driver.

JeffD

 

Jeff - well right. I am thinking we are at the point where we need to decide what we do. It is still young and I know we can still get tons of miles out of it...but IF we are going to trade it in the time would be soon as too many more miles will significantly impact the resale/trade in price.

My wife is in Pharma sales so we will only own this car for another 3 years MAX as her company requires a car's year to be within 3 years of the current calander year. So we need a car by the end of 2010...which of course is a while off.

 

What would you trade it for? An 08?

My first thought is I'd seriously think about holding on to it at this point--the mileage must still be great (no clue if any of her travel costs are covered but if you're paying for all the gas all those miles must be adding up savings on the TCH), and personally the only thing I'd really want to trade it for would be another TCH. And as the 08s seem to be more or less the same as the 07, you wouldn't be gaining anything except lower miles. But if you hold on for now, the next generation may have meaningful improvements in technology. Presumably plug-ins and other advances are coming down the road before a whole lot longer. No clue when we can expect to see more significant boosts in FE from newer technology (I know they're looking at capacitors as a possible replacement for batteries, too, and all kinds of things in the picture at this point), but waiting another year could still get you an actual upgrade if you stick with the TCH. (And what could you possibly want to switch to from a TCH?? )

 

Ha ha ha, this is one of those "**** if you do, **** if you don't" cases. Look at it this way: imagine your wife will drive another 45k miles next year so which car will loose more in resale value, your current TCH going from 45k to 90K and gaining 1 yr, or brand new car going from 0 to 45k??? As far as I remember any car looses most value at the beginning of it's life, so keeping current car should be more cost efficient than trading it.

 

Can I ask a question? If she piling on the miles, why would you trade in a hybrid? The whole cost analysis on making a hybrid purchase is based on the fact that after a certain amount of miles, you start realizing the cost savings. Up until that threshold, your cost savings in fuel is simply paying off the additional cost of the hybrid engine. So it is the people that DON'T drive a lot of miles where it might not be worth it to purchase a hybrid vehicle. I specifically bought my TCH because I drive 25k/year, so I will start seeing the payback in fuel savings within 3-4 years.

 

I am also in the "high-mileage" group.

I am currently averaging 40,000 miles a year, and at this rate I am saving about $400 a year over a similar 4 cylinder version. I am not sure what that actual cost difference is between a fully loaded 4 cylinder and my loaded TCH, but if it is $1,500, I will need to keep the car for 4 years to break even. i really plan to keep the car for 5-6 years so i hope I can get 250,000 out of it before selling it for next to nothing. At that point, I will probably just get a new TCH.

 

I believe we will see some very high mileage TCH's in a few years. Hobbit has over 316,000 miles on his '02 Prius.