[Mr 5 0]

This seems to be a fairly recent development in the private sector of automobile sales. Before reading this thread I had never heard of anyone asking to make payments on a privately-sold car. You learn something new every day.

I sold my '90 LX in May and no one who called ever asked about payments. Had they done so, I would have just laughed and told them this was a private sale and if you want to make payments, go buy from a dealer...and pay his prices. Of course, I sold my one-owner, perfectly maintained LX 5.0 on the third call, so I'm probably not a good indicator of this new phenomenon of people attempting to buy a car from a private owner and then, with a straight face, asking him to take payments in lieu of cash upfront. Yeah, that'll catch on quick.

I suspect it's just ignorance and/or dreamers who have no chance of actually buying, say, a nice, late-model (or any model) V-8 Mustang because they don't have credit and/or enough cash but they figure: "Hey, maybe I'll get lucky...after all, there's no harm in asking". It's either that, or the would-be buyers are uniformly dumb and think you're a dealer when they read your ad.

Bottom line: In God We Trust. All Others Pay Cash.