Anyone ever try one of the "donate a car" programs before?

http://www.donateacar.com/
http://www.donate-a-car.org/google/
http://www.800charitycars.org/

I have an old 1997 Grand Am that I am ready to get rid of, and I honestly dont want to go through the hassle of selling it. Not interested in people calling me at home wanting to see it or even coming over to my home to test drive it (I dont think a 97 GA will draw a popular crowd). Its blue book value is only about $1800, so I was just wondering if donating it would make sense. I should be able to count it as a donation for tax purposes and since I really dont need the money up front, it kinda seems like a fairly decent idea. What do you guys think?

i donated my pos altima just after i got my 8 in '03 to the salvation army. i'm not sure, but i think the tax deduction has changed to where you can only get a certain amount to deduct vs. the blue book value.

i did it because there was 160k on the odo and some soccer mom in her tahoe took out my rear quarter panel in a parking lot. i wasn't going to get squat for a trade-in and i didn't want to deal with trying to sell it myself. besides, someone needed it more that i did. they (salvation army) came and picked it up and sent me the paperwork. piece o cake.

yeah, starting on jan 1, 2005, you can only deduct the *actual* auction price that the car got, instead of the KBB value.

kinda sucks if you have a beater that will be extremely hard to sell, and is just taking up space :o

IIRC, under the new rules, you can only deduct what the charity actually sells the car for. If they put your Grand Am up for auction and it only fetches $500, that's all you can deduct.