My car is junk

I took my 1998 black Mazda Millenia to CarMax on Monday to get an appraisal. I was hoping that I could sell my car for a decent trade in price to CarMax so that I could use it as a downpayment on a new car, namely a 2007 Toyota Camry. If you haven't been to CarMax, I'm sure you've seen their advertisements that promise to "buy your car, even if you don't buy theirs". Well, guess what? They want to buy my Mazda Millenia for a whopping $250! (yeah, I said it), so now they've made it harder for me to buy theirs...dumb jerks!

It seems that my car (which isn't even 10 years old!) is basically unsellable. I guess it was really unrealistic for me to think that my car would garner a decent price when it's afflicted with the following problems:

• Broken engine (needs a knock sensor and probably to be rebuilt)
• Broken struts
• Cracked CV boot
• Cracked front bumper (damn, road debris)
• High mileage (149K miles)
• CRACKED RIM (which I just found out about today...sigh)

However, most of these factors weren't even considered in the CarMax appraisal. Just the fact that my car is a Mazda Millenia and isn't being manufactured anymore, is old, has high miles, and has engine noise, was enough for CarMax to deem it only worth $250! (Please bare with me. I'm still reeling from the fact that my entire car is worth less than the new brake service that I just put on my car.)

I'm now confronted with the following options:

• Take car to a traditional dealer and try to negotiate a higher trade-in value AFTER finalizing a price for a new car - I would really love to do this but my negotiation skills are terrible. They would see right through me and some how they'd end up getting over on me.
• See if another car appraisal company (WeBuyCars.org) would give me a better appraisal price for my car - I'm checking into this option today.
• Donate my car to charity - Unfortunately, it appears that I missed out on the too good to be true tax benefits of donating a car. It used to be that you could write off the fair market value of your car (i.e., what Kelley Blue Book says your car is worth). NOW, the tax laws have changed and you can only write off what the charity sells your car for. If I'm looking at the possibility of seeing my car sell for a measly $250, what the hell is the point! (Hmm.. I guess I'm not very charitable after all.)
• Initiate a private party sale (meaning put a For Sale sign in the window or an ad in the paper and hope and pray that someone will give me a decent price for my car - My cheapskate dad loves this option. No matter how I try to convince him that NO ONE would buy my heap of junk (that's my new name for my car by the way), he thinks this and donating to charity are my only two options. He refuses to even accept that I would consider trading it in.

So as you see, I have some decisions to make. I also need to call my insurance company to see what rate I would get for a new car of my choice (that Dodge Caliber is looking better and better), call a credit union to see if I can join it and get access to better rates, and go car shopping.

I hope by this time next week, I'll be blogging about my new car. Keep your fingers crossed!