Experience in selling a '12 v

Well done!

 

Thanks for posting your experience. I have been wondering how easy it will be to sell our 2012 Prius v which is at 40,xxx miles. It's good to know there is a demand. All the cars we've parted with in the past several decades have gone to friends and young relatives but none seem interested in a Prius. Hybrid cars aren't in demand by teenage boys just getting their drivers licenses.

You made a good point about rusted license plate bolts. Kansas where we live also issues renewal stickers and never new plates unless one asks and pays. When I decided to replace the nasty looking nearly unreadable 20 year old license plate on our five year old Sienna a few months ago, I found that one of the bolts had rusted to the nut. Attempting to remove the bolt broke the nut holding it inside the tailgate free which meant that both the bolt and nut spun. I thought about removing the tailgate trim panel so I could hold the nut with pliers while unscrewing the bolt but decided to take the problem to a body shop that had done a lot work for us. I don't know what method the body shop used but they extracted the bolt and attached a new nut inside the tailgate in barely 10 minutes at no charge. I'm sure glad I got this done before we parted with Sienna - might have caused a minor emergency when its next owner wanted to drive it away.

After having this problem on the Sienna I thought it best to also replace the license plate bolts on our Prius v since they hadn't been removed in nearly seven years. I barely got the two license plate bolts out of the Prius without breaking the nuts inside the tailgate free.

This time I made sure to buy high quality stainless steel Allen hex socket bolts. I got the kind that have rounded heads that can't be gripped with pliers. I've never had a license plate stolen/switched but I've interrupted attempted thefts several times. From what I'm reading on the Internet, license plate theft/switching happens a lot. I'm more concerned about license plate theft/switching on the Prius since we might not notice if the switched plate number was similar. I think someone would have to be a real bozo to put my Sienna's license plate on his car and I would quickly notice if it was switched.