B4V (96 Passat wagon) for sale in New Mexico, 210K miles - price?

First off, I’m the sort that believes there is a story to go along with every car, so if you want “just the facts,” skip to the bulleted points below. I for one, always felt better knowing the person and the relationship to the car as well as its history when purchasing a car, so what follows is a bit of the story behind this car.
I purchased our beloved ‘96 Passat wagon from the original owner in 2012. I had been looking for something more spacious than our NB TDI and had decided that my dream car would be a B4V, but they were too hard to find at a reasonable price and they disappeared quickly. I finally found one by chance (a TDI loving co-worker said his friend’s father owned one back in the day and might still have it) and although it was a couple hundred miles away sitting unused in a barn, the owner assured me that it would be okay to drive home. It started right up and drove fine on our test drive, so my wife and I decided to plunk down the cash to have a better family car. It drove well on the way home and we were impressed by how quiet it was compared to our ‘99 Beetle, although the brakes were terrible. After getting the car home, it sat for a couple of days and I noticed a significant wet spot below the car – diesel. The fuel injection pump was leaking like a sieve, (all over the coolant hoses) and so I set about finding out what I needed to do to repair that and to make this my dream car. It took nearly a year for me to get the car finished and I finally had it drive-able with the following repairs and upgrades:

• Injection pump seal kit from Dieselgeek w/ Viton pump head seal upgrade
• New rubber coolant hoses below IP
• New thermostat and plastic elbow
• TB kit from Dieselgeek w/water pump
• Steel serpentine belt tensioner roller w/ big bearing (upgrade seen somewhere on this forum)
• Air filter, cabin filter, Mobil Delvac 1 and Mann oil filter
• Coolant flush and G12+ coolant
• Clean intake manifold
• New rear stub axles and new wheel bearings all around
• Redline synthetic gear oil for transmission
• New tie rod ends
• Repack CV joints and new boots
• Polyurethane and Audi TT control arm bushings
• Koni Sport (yellow) shocks and struts with new strut mounts and bearings
• Eurospec 11” rotor rear brake upgrade kit from ECS
• Girling G60 11” front brakes – new rotors and caliper carriers, used calipers (purchased on TDI club) with caliper rebuild kit
• New 25.4mm ATE master cylinder
• 15” alloy rims and Yokohama YK580s to clear the brakes
• Alignment
• Solar Guard Ultra 20% window film on all but windshield
• Redline leather shifter and e-brake boots
• Sony stereo and speakers, w/ Bluetooth and hands free
• 15” full sized spare with alloy rim
• Weathertech mats and cargoliner
• Fumoto drain valve
• New vacuum lines
• New fresh/recirculating air flap controller
• New antenna (from Dodge Nitro)
• 9005 low beam bulb mod
• [FONT=&quot]Meirsatz liftgate struts[/FONT]

It ran well for a while and I was delighted to finally have the car I had long wanted. Then, on a cold winter night hundreds of miles from home, the car wouldn’t start. After calling in a favor to have the car trailered home, I dug into the problem and eventually called on professional help. After separating me from a considerable sum of money, the European car service had reset the timing and, suspecting the ECU, installed a good used ECU (a GQ or FA tunable model, which I purchased from KermaTDI) and the car ran well for a couple of weeks. Then it had difficulty starting and ran poorly. I checked the timing using VCDS and found the timing was off. I returned to these forums and finally began to suspect the crank pulley (although I requested that the shop check it). Sure enough, the bolt was over-torqued and snapped while trying to loosen it. The pulley had clearly been drifting on the crank end. With a lot of help from this forum, I was able to restore the end of the crank to dead flat and within .001” lateral run-out, clean the threads out, and mount a new pulley (replacing the end bearing while I was at it). The car ran great, so I got the clutch-saver tune from KermaTDI and all was right with the world. My wife mentioned that the only thing that was lacking to finish the job at this point was to deal with the peeling clear coat, so we had the car repainted (not a top-shelf $7000 paint job some quoted, but not a Maaco cheapie either - it cost $2500) in its original maroon color (I think VW calls it Indian Red Pearl). Shortly after this, our car was stolen from in front of our house. It was recovered 2 days later a mile from our house with the back hatch spray painted flat black, the paint on the bumpers scraped up, all tires slashed, and the dome light panel ripped out of the ceiling. The insurance holding lot ensured that the rims were damaged as well. When we got the car back, we had a lot of work to do.
In the meantime, VW was finally permitted to sell the 2015 TDIs languishing at its dealerships, and my wife pleaded with me to spend less time working on cars – couldn’t we just try one of the new TDIs out? So when we drove home with a 2015 Sportwagen, it was decided that we sell the Passat. A year later, I’m finally getting up the nerve to say goodbye to my beloved project car. It is reshod with 16” rims and Yokohama YK780s with just over 10k on them, the paint has been cleaned up, and it is ready to go.



Issues:

• Dome light/sunroof control panel cover is missing – all lights, and switches are there and work - as does the non-leaking sunroof - but the plastic surround is gone
• The switches in the door frames that control dome lights are broken or missing
• Switch that controls the side view mirrors, while still functioning, does not snap into place
• Stock drink holders are broken, as is rear ash tray
• Paint on the bumpers is in poor shape. I suspect that the body shop did not add enough flex additive to the plastic parts. My intention was going to be to use a bed liner type product to match the rocker panels
• VW factory rack cross bars were damaged on one end to force bike mounts off when car was stolen
• Carpet on passenger’s side appears to have had a floor mat glued down at one time
• There is a bit of black spray paint left under the TDI logo and at the upper edge of the hatch
• Plastic trim at the back edge of headliner is broken
• Rack and pinion boot is torn – have boots but have not installed
• Center brake light is broken
• Interior light above passenger’s side rear door is missing lens
• Instrument cluster replaced by first owner at about 100k miles
• Rearview mirror is missing

The Good stuff:

• This car was purchased new in Albuquerque and has by and large been a New Mexico car (it spent a brief time in its home country, Germany , as well as a time in Alaska, where they do not use salt, I am told) so it is amazingly rust free
• GQ/FA ECU with KermaTDI clutch saver tune (was going to upgrade the tune when the clutch finally needed to be replaced, but the darn thing still holds beatifully)
• Lots of extras: Bentley manuals – 2 volume print in like new condition (and CD), VAG-COM (Hex-USB), TB tools, spare rear bumper brackets (was going to fabricate a receiver hitch using these), factory roof rack cross bars (one end damaged, but easily straightenable), stock chips for GQ/FA ECU
• Yokohama YK780 tires w/ 10k miles
• Paint other than on bumpers is beautiful
• Free Carfax (I ran it figuring people would need/want this)
• All the upgrades and service listed earlier
• Synthetic oil at 10k intervals (sometimes Mobil Turbo Diesel/Delvac 1 and sometimes Rotella Synthetic and once Amsoil – all 5W40)
• If wanted, spare AHU/1Z motor with about 80k miles (originally purchased for TDI Type 2 conversion that never happened (extra cost for this – negotiable) and original BK ECU

Now the only problem is I'm not sure how much to sell it for. I was hoping for $6500 without the spare motor. Is this reasonable? I'm open to opinions from forum members and will take it all in consideration.
I don't seem to be able to post photos, so please see photos here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/v9Y4BjEp7HBobrE36

Agreed. Perhaps I have not kept up with the value on this car as it has aged. Or maybe I drank some of Nice Cars' kool-aid
My hope was that I would get some guidance about pricing, and lacking that, it seems a fair move to simply state a value that is lower.
Let's say $5k.
Response will determine if that is reasonable or not, I suppose.

Values on these cars has fallen in general, although you may still find a buyer who absolutely wants one and will pay for a clean example. The big plus your car has, it seems, is lack of rust. That's a problem on these cars now that they're over 20 years old.

I have a clean, perfectly running B4 Sedan I keep, in part because it's not worth selling. Wagons are worth more, but they're still a challenge to sell these days. The new cars on the market don't help. And your mods don't necessarily add value to the car, unless you find someone who wants precisely those mods.

$5K is probably a good starting point. If the right buyer comes along, you may get it.

That is around where I'm going to list mine after quite a bit of work & with Cabrio front leather seats. This is the one IBW said was one of the strongest pulling ones he's driven (that was years ago at a Midwest meetup). The sedan on the other hand is probably going for $2500 at best and that is with the PNW premium that still seems to play out (don't know what you've seen IBW)

Not sure how your sedan looks, but that seems about right for a car with A/C deleted.

Mine is pretty clean, here it is after I had a small amount of rust cleaned up last Spring. I also put on new brakes and tires all round.

Interior is all there, only thing it needs is the sunroof shade cloth reattached. Everything works. But I doubt it's worth more than $3K to the right buyer. Not worth selling. As soon as I did one of my kids will wreck his TDI and need one.

IndigoBlueWagon said:

Not worth selling. As soon as I did one of my kids will wreck his TDI and need one.

Click to expand...

Ha! As mine is 5 he'll probably start with self driving, a vintage BMW 2002 like his mom, or a jet pack...

My take-away is that value is in the eye of the buyer. My old diesel Rabbit was the only non-southwest car I've ever owned, and I remember parts of it crumbling as I tried to loosen bolts. In light of that, I suppose rust free may be a big deal. Thanks for the feedback to all who offered it.