Donating old car? Who to?

[Nora_SEA]

We have a car that bit the dust and is not dependable any longer. It's a 1994 Kia Sephia that has nearly 200,000 miles on it - a miracle if you know anything about those cars! I drove it in a deep puddle a couple months ago and it died. Our mechanic got it running for $50 and proceeded to tell us to sell it while it was running. I just couldn't do that. Knowing that it was just "barely running". It's honestly not worth hardly anything. Especially running rough. We just want to be done with it. Do people really buy junk cars or should we donate it? Any experiences or insight is appreciated.

[robin3]

We've donated a couple of cars to Cars 4 Causes and were able to take the value of the car off our taxes as a donation. It was easy. They came and picked them up, gave us a form to fill out for taxes and we signed them over.

[AnalogWife]

My sil recently told me that Catholic Charities is the best place to donate a car, in our area. It wasn't just because we're Catholic, there was some other tax-related/administration BS-free reason as well. GL!

[Purple*Lotus]

My DH has donated two cars to the local Habitat for Humanity. You might look in to that

[Kyamo]

Originally Posted by Nora_SEA

We just want to be done with it. Do people really buy junk cars or should we donate it? Any experiences or insight is appreciated.

People do buy junk cars, people who can fix stuff themselves for the cost of parts. We recently sold a barely running car through an ad we posted on craigslist. We got $500 for it. Not much, but better than nothing, and glad to be rid of it.

[Garden~Lover]

we have always donated our old cars, I normally use Kars 4 Kids. They come to your house to pick it up, you dont even have to be home it just has to be somewhere they can get it , driveway, yard, street. They leave you a reciept they took it, then you get your tax reciept in the mail about a month later.
Now my most recent donation was a 1992 ford minivan. That didnt work,.
with Kars 4 Kids, they dont need to work, if they dont work they just break down the parts and sell the metal.

While the van was sitting in our driveway we had some guy come to our house and said he would take it away for free. I would rather donate it legally.

[wendyland]

We donated a car to humane society. It was running, but I think most places will take one if it's not running. I also think that people do buy junk cars. We could have sold it, but we wanted to donate. It's rare that we have enough money to make a good sized donation and we were glad to get the opportunity.

[Jilian]

I know there are many salvation army locations that will pick it up and you can write it off on your taxes. But you can also try selling it to a dealership if you want the money. Many dealerships will buy a used car from you even if you are not buying a car from them. They'll use the parts on a junk car or just auction it off.

[Belleweather]

Call around and see. Or sell it "as is" for very little -- we had to sell DH's ex-car quick because it was about to be towed away by our landlord who would have charged us to dispose of it. It was a low mileage ancient saturn that wasn't running and ended up selling it to a guy who was installing carpet in the condo next door for $200. We were totally honest about it's (MANY) faults, but he tinkered with it for 45 minutes, asked us for a jump and drove it away! We both felt like we got a GREAT deal.

[mbm]

DH gave one completely dead car to a charity for the blind, because they had a TV commercial he liked featuring Tom Bosley.

The next car, which had one and a half feet in the grave, we sold to a scrapyard for $500. We took out the radio first and got another $100 or so for that.

I have recently heard ads asking people to donate their old cars to NPR.