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.