Carvana's new Value Tracker tool proves old selling advice: Shop around

Online used car sales site Carvana just launched its Value Tracker to keep tabs on used car values. The company’s director of engineering for special projects said of the tool, “The car in a customer’s driveway is likely one of the largest assets in their portfolio, and yet most have no idea at any given moment what that asset is worth. With Carvana Value Tracker, we are demystifying car selling by offering insight into a customer’s car’s value at any point in time, in a way that is actionable should they choose to sell.”

The only nitpick we have with Carvana’s actual tool is that it requires an e-mail before responding with a value. That’s nothing a burner account can’t solve, or you use the prominent link to change notification settings at the end of the process. As far as the results, we planned to run three cars through the tracker to see where it stood against other valuation sites like Kelley Blue Book (KBB) and TrueCar. After two cars, we knew enough. The results were proof of car-selling advice that’s older than cars, as old as selling itself: Shop around.

We found two cars for sale on two non-Carvana sites, both in very good condition, one car chosen as a bread-and-butter baseline, the other for resale value. The baseline was a 2018 Ford Escape SE with SYNC and 106,625 miles on the odo. The dealer selling the car is asking $14,000. KBB claimed trade-in range is $5,618 to $6,911, whereas the range for private-party sale is $7,046 to $8,579. KBB proposed an instant cash offer. TrueCar valued the Escape at $8,506 and did not propose an instant cash offer. Carvana’s Value Tracker pegged the Ford at $8,720. Finally, we went to Carvana’s car sales side and searched a 2018 Ford Escape SE. Among two pages of listings, there wasn’t an example under $15,990 — a white SE with 102,234 miles. 

Our second vehicle was a 2015 Honda Civic EX-L with 88,618 miles. The dealer selling the sedan wants $16,156, which is supposedly $504 below CarFax’s retail valuation of $15,660. Carvana’s Value Tracker said the Civic is worth $7,603, TrueCar said $10,423. KBB said trade-in value fell between $12,650 and $14,799, private-party sellers should look for between $13,620 and $15,939. Meanwhile, on Carvana’s sales site, a 2015 Honda Civic EX-L with 62,995 miles costs $18,990, a 2013 Civic EX-L with 91,662 miles wants $16,990.

We tried the Escape in the value tool on Carvana’s main page that the site’s had as long as we can remember, the one that lets car shoppers get a value for either selling a car outright or trading a car in to Carvana. The Escape came back with the same $8,720 value for selling and for trading in. We’ve asked Carvana if the new Value Tracker is different than the existing Sell/Trade In tool, we’ll update the post if we get a response.

Of note, when we entered the Escape’s mileage incorrectly as 10,625, Carvana’s tool said that figure was lower than the site’s last recorded mileage for the same VIN, making it clear Carvana’s building a database of used vehicles (and why wouldn’t it?). We did the same at KBB and TrueCar, entering the Escape VIN we’d just had valued but with much lower mileage, neither site mentioned it. 

So Carvana came back with the highest Escape valuation and the lowest Civic valuation. In both cases, though, sellers would be sacrificing thousands by taking the Carvana offer when compared to what Carvana and other dealers want for the same or similar cars. As the old Yellow Pages ads used to say, let your fingers do the walking … on the keyboard, to a range of valuation sites.