I've owned over 30 cars in my life and have never bought one I couldnt test drive unless it was so cheap it didnt matter if something was really wrong with it.

How about letting someone drive your car but they choose to beat on it, anyone ever experience that? Few days ago some older woman tried to drive my car and was redlining questioning defuq to do. Told her car is not for her after pulling the keys out.
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Columbia Chrysler's policy is that if you are looking at a certain kind of car, we don't talk prices until you get to do a test drive with us at least. No point grinding on prices and then the customer come and tell us they want to walk because there is not enough grunt or other nuances that price cannot fix.

maybe it was in N and the guy put it in D when it was still at high-revs.

You can usually tell immediately if someone is genuinely interested in your vehicle or they're just here to go from a test drive. When I sold my vehicle I had the "No test pilots" line in my ad as well but I still had 4-5 people that came just to take the car for a spin. But to be honest, as long as the interested party isn't redlining the car and driving it like they stole it then I don't have any issues.

Just to be stern when you feel like your car can potentially be damaged and respectfully say no.

While that could do some damage, it is in no way consistent with 320douche's story that while the car was stopped, in park, redlining it somehow blew the transmission.

Mark

blown tranny from redlining in park - i lol'd pretty hard
if you're gonna make something up, at least try to have it make sense? :pokerface:
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Maybe it was an automatic, person but the car in drive and held down brakes while attempting to redline?

That might actually be plausible... might

Yeah, I've only bought one car sight unseen and without test driving it. Only reason I did that is because I bought it as a parts car and didn't give a rats ass about how it drove. Every other time, however, a test drive was necessary. A car can look and sound good, just idling in the parking lot, but driving it can reveal a lot of different things that can go unnoticed when it's just sitting, including CEL's that the owner tried to clear before you came by.

I've always offered to take people out in the car, then only let them drive it if I assess they are very serious, one of the latter steps in the sale process. I've never owned sold anything rare or exotic, odds are those people have taken similar cars out for drives so they are familiar with what to expect already.

My bigger issue is WHAT IF an accident were to occur with the test driver driving being at fault? It would be on my insurance, my premium would take the hit, and I would have a car that has damage on it at the worst time possible (when trying to sell). And obviously that driver would no longer want to buy the car, just makes the situation more difficult. Part of the hassle of private sales. But like I said I've never had any issues selling my car privately this way. I just price my cars low enough that there's always good interest, but still more than I'd get back from trade-in.

if you want to sell your used car, your going to have to deal with test drives!
if i don't get to test drive a used car, i will not buy it, plain and simple
yes its possibly a waste of your time, but if you don't want the hassles, then just trade in your car to get a new car, much faster and don't have to deal with a private sale