​Even when you’re buying a brand new car, saying goodbye to your old car can sometimes be a bitter-sweet experience.
While technology now provides all kinds of ways to sell your current car privately, there are many great reasons to choose to trade-in your vehicle at a dealership. These can include:

Convenience: out with the old, in with the new
When you choose to trade-in your old car at the dealership from which you are buying a new car, you can simply drive it in, negotiate a trade-in value, and drive away in your brand new car. Assuming you’re prepared and have all the documentation you need for any finance you require, the whole process also need  only take an hour or two. Keep in mind that dealers will accept a broad range of makes and models for trade-in too: a Mitsubishi dealer won’t just accept used Mitsubishi vehicles.

Time: eliminate the stress and hassle
Selling a car privately can take an enormous amount of time and effort. You have to clean and prepare your car for sale, and take high resolution photos and upload them along with a detailed description of the vehicle’s specs. You then need to field countless enquiries from potential buyers, and arrange to meet them either at your home or at a third party location. All the while, you need to keep your vehicle in pristine condition so it can be sold at any time. All of this can be very time consuming and stressful. By contrast, simply driving your car into a dealer is quick, seamless and hassle-free.

Money exchange: keep it simple
When you sell a car privately, you have to haggle and negotiate on price, and then collect cash or a cheque for your old car. This can involve trips to the bank, and potentially, waiting for funds to clear. If you wish to secure finance for your new car, allocating the cash from your old car, your new purchase can get complicated. When you sell your car at a dealer, however, your trade-in value is simply taken directly off the cost of your new car. This makes the entire financial transaction far simpler and more straightforward.   
Keep in mind that if you decide to use a dealer to trade-in your vehicle, there are also things that you can do to maximise your trade-in value. These include: 

Do your research
Determine exactly what your car is worth by comparing makes and models that were made in the same year as your car, and the same interior and specs options.

Be realistic
As with any sale, it’s important to be realistic about the value you can potentially get for your vehicle. Use online tools as a guide, and take a look at some used car advertisements to see what other customers are hoping to get for vehicles with the same specifications as yours. Make sure you’re comparing apples with apples. If looking at private sales, also make note of how long a vehicle has been advertised at a particular price: if it’s been online for several weeks, the asking price is obviously too high.
Are you looking to buy a new vehicle soon?
Contact
​Bill Sonntag
Phone: 06 968 5679 Ext 725 
Mobile: 0274 572 711 
Email: bill@wrphillips.co.nz

We love to play hard in our Mitsubishi 4WD’s whether it be taking the boat down to the water or heading out on a caravan holiday or even taking the horses and float to the forest. But overloading your vehicle can be dangerous and understanding exactly what your tow car can do is one of the most important lessons to learn.

We’ve had a go at simplifying it for you!

A headline grabbing towing capacity claim doesn’t reveal the full story. Most vehicles can only tow their maximum braked trailer weight with a light load otherwise they exceed their design limits for weight. And that is the asterisk which usually sits behind those bold 3500kg claims.

First things first, let’s have a look at the vehicle specs, comparing the 16MY Triton and a competitor. In order to calculate true and balanced towing capacity we need to crunch some numbers.
The most important number to work out is the maximum payload. The maximum payload is what extra weight can be on or in your car when you’re towing the maximum braked towing capacity, ie the number that is being claimed in advertising.
Assuming the two drivers above are looking to tow the maximum they can tow with their respective vehicles we can work out what the maximum payload is.
There are two factors maximum payload is determined by, Gross Vehicle Mass (GVM1) or Gross Combination Mass (GCM2). Both GVM and GCM are limiting factors as neither of those numbers must be exceeded when towing.
From these two limiting factors the lowest calculated number determines the available payload. In the above case looking at the 16MY Triton GLS in Manual Transmission the remaining payload is 603kg, almost double what competitor A can still carry at 341kg.
Then have a think about how many people you want to take with you. In our scenario we’re taking 4 men weighing 80kg each and a child, weighing 40kg. This brings the remaining payload down to 243kg in the Triton and it pushes competitor A above its certified GCM limit by 19kg.
We then need to pack in fishing rods, an eski, a tackle box, all the things which help make it a great day on the water. Say this weighs a combined weight of 40kg’s our Triton still has 203kg of weight available. While competitor A slips further into the red being overloaded by 59kg.
Now our Triton driver has a pretty successful day out on the water. He and his mates have a great day catching 10kg of fish. So on the drive home they still have 193kg of payload available. Whereas over in Competitor A’s ute they are now over by a whopping 69kg. Let’s hope they don’t encounter a weigh bridge on their way home!

The Mitsubishi Triton is all about balanced and safe towing. Providing you stay within the specified maximum trailer limit, tow vehicle capacity as per your owners manual and use the recommended towball load you will never exceed the maximum combination weight, leaving you to focus on what’s important, catching fish and having a great day out with your mates!

1 — Payload = GVM - Kerb Mass – Towball download at ATM
2 — Payload = GCM - Kerb Mass - ATM.
Disclaimer: Content is correct at date of publishing. Vehicle related content in this article refers to 16MY Mitsubishi Triton.