re: 1990 200tq: wood trim?

[Lee Levitt <wheelman@shore.net>]

Benjamin Weste Pearre <bwpearre@CS.Princeton.EDU> writes:
> 
> The wood trim is nice and good looking on the driver's side, but
> washed out or faded (much, much lighter and duller) on the right.
> It's washed out totally uniformly, much as if there is some kind of
> plastic coating over it like the ones you get on a new microwave
> oven's display, so the display doesn't get scratched in shipment.  Is
> this, in fact, the case?  Will I be able to remove this coating which
> hasn't been off in 7 years?  Or will I have to live with non-matching
> wood trim?  Can I just take the wood off and finish it myself?  The
> varnish really is a little on the thick side.  As far as I can tell,
> the wood is completely undamaged.

Live with it dude. You'll be busy replacing other things, like bulbs and
switches, etc :) My '90 has similar fading...you forget about it after a
while.

Also, it's an awfully thin veneer. It will never look better than it does
now...you might *really* wish you hadn't tried to fix it...

> 
> The other question is this: how far should I trust the Kelley Blue
> Book value?  The car needs, immediately, about $900-$1000 in
> maintenance, in order to bring it up to the condition in which a
> dealer would sell it.  It's a private sale.  The KBB value for a
> dealer-bought car is $11710 or so.  What's a reasonable rule of thumb
> to turn this into a private-sale price?  Aside from a couple of little
> things, the car is doing quite well.
> 

If it's under 100K in miles,and in very good condition otherwise, it might
be worth $10K. I paid exactly $11 for a single owner '90 200T (auto, sport
seats) two years ago, very clean, 60K miles. That was about market back
then...$12K seems a bit optimistic, particularly on the east coast. Course
it is late fall, and quattros become more dear after the first snowfall :)

If it's a clean car, and everything is right with it, or can be fixed, I'd
figure on putting a total of $10K into it (purchase plus repairs). I'd go
to $11K if I really liked the car (color, condition, options, etc).
They're a bit hard to find in good shape...

HTH,

Lee