The Best Resale Junkyard Cars: Could There Be Gold in Your Old Jalopy?

If you have ever worked in a U.S. auto assembly plant, or know someone who has, you may have heard stories about foreign vehicles being purposefully damaged in the plant’s parking lot. While it takes a certain amount of gusto to invest in the product of your employer’s competitor, and then wave the investment in the face of your company’s employees, there is a reason why otherwise patriotic Americans buy foreign autos like Honda and Toyota: they are often more reliable than their American counterparts. By extension, they are also some of the most profitable junk cars.

How Can a Junk Car Be Valuable?

When you think of a valuable used vehicle, you may think of a car sitting in the lot of an auto dealer with an attention grabbing price tag in its window, but this is not the context in which junk cars are valuable. By definition, a junk car is unsuitable to drive. Damage to the body, interior, or engine of the vehicle makes the cost of repairing it exceed its sale value, rendering it financially useless as a method of transportation. However, the automobile’s undamaged components may still hold value, making it a commodity as one of the best resale junkyard cars on a lot for used and salvageable auto parts.

As mentioned above, the best resale junkyard cars often have a reputation for reliability. When a vehicle can be driven for hundreds of thousands of miles without dying, the driver considers it wise to invest in repair parts for the car. With that said, popular vehicles that demonstrate average reliability may also be valuable to salvage yards, albeit for a different reason. If the vehicles are in good condition under the hood, a salvage yard can sell almost every part there. After all, if the parts do not last as long as the most reliable components, people need them faster.

What Determines Value?

The value of a junk vehicle depends on at least four factors a junkyard considers before it quotes a price:

  • The make and model of the vehicle
  • The condition of the body and engine
  • The demand for the vehicle’s parts and components
  • Whether the yard already has the vehicle

Whether your clunker is among the most profitable junk cars ultimately depends on how interested salvage yards are in buying it. If one yard does not seem too interested, be sure to call a few more. It may be the first yard already has vehicles similar to yours in stock.

Being Reasonable

If you plan to junk a vehicle you originally bought new, you probably remember paying thousands of dollars for the car before you drove it off the lot. Remember, though, the years since the car was purchased have decreased the vehicle’s value. If the car was in an accident, suffered an engine fire, or experienced an event that “totaled” it, its value has decreased further. Moreover, selling a vehicle to a salvage yard is an opportunity to receive money for a vehicle that is otherwise worthless. You may receive hundreds of dollars for your automobile, or possibly more; it depends on the criteria mentioned above.

Call Wrench-A-Part

If you have a junk vehicle, Wrench-A-Part may be interested in buying it. Unlike salvage yards that make you wait days for towing services and haggle more than Boss Hogg buying a piece of land in Hazzard County, we quickly tow your vehicle and respect the automobile’s value. Call us today to learn more about the best resale junkyard cars.