Next week’s Thursday competition promises to be exciting. At stake is a beautiful 2003 Mercedes-Benz CLK320 Cabriolet valued at R350,000. According to the seller, the car has, among other nifty features, like built-in navigation and TV, something called Parking distance control (PDC).

The conventional wisdom has it that second-hand cars are not well-suited for selling online, because the prospective buyers do want to check out the car before buying it: to test-drive it, examine the seats, kick the tires.  That is why the cars for sale on bidorbuy are as a rule listed in the classified section.  Most sellers think that this format works well for cars so well, in fact, that there are now about 35,000 cars listed on the site. Listing in the classified section means that, for a R50 fee, you can put up the picture and description of the car, as well as your contact detail,  and wait for a buyer to call you.

Quite apart from these considerations, not many sellers are prepared to put items of such high value as cars can be on a R1, no-reserve auction. The seller of this particular car, the Mercedes-Benz CLK320 Cabriolet, who goes under the bidorbuy user name MissSale, seems rather confident as far as the performance on the auction goes. She is much more concerned about the winning bidder not being able to fulfil her or his obligation and see the transaction through in “real life”. That is why she is asking the bidders to bid only if they have cash, or if they know that their bank is ready to grant them finance.

To add to the thrill of having such a beauty on a R1, no-reserve auction, bidorbuy is inviting South African bloggers to try to guess what the highest bid will be at the close of the auction on Thursday 27 November. Therefore, bloggers, follow the rules posted on the Best Guess Competition page and you may win R300 cash prize.