Selling a junk car in the Town of Lexington

How a for-sale car gets towed

A tow under Section 75.13 needs police authorization and one of two kinds of notice: actual notice to the owner, or a conspicuous notice on the windshield giving a removal deadline "not being sooner than seven (7) days after the notice is attached." Storage is "at the owner's or operator's expense."

Once the car is towed, a certified letter is mailed with a return receipt requested. For a car registered in South Carolina it is mailed the next business day; for an out-of-state car, no later than the fourteenth calendar day.

Thirty days on private property

Section 97.03 is the town's junk-car rule. Lexington allows no grace time on streets: "No person shall leave any partially dismantled, nonoperating, wrecked, or junked vehicle on any street or highway within the Town." On private land, whoever is in charge, owner, tenant, occupant or lessee, can't let one "remain on such property longer than thirty (30) days."

Three exceptions:

• it is kept in a closed building in Lexington where neither the street nor neighboring homes can see it
• it is at a storage place the Town maintains
• it is on private property under "a custom cover which is water repellant and properly secured to the vehicle and is not itself in a state of disrepair"

The cover route comes with a cap: "no more than one such vehicle will be allowed on a parcel" unless the others are in an enclosed garage or other structure, or screened from public view. Two dead cars under tarps in the same yard do not both qualify.

State rules underneath

State definitions still reach inside town limits. Seven days on land whose controller never said yes turns a car abandoned, and an unregistered vehicle past its eighth birthday can qualify as derelict, one test of several. As a warning, town code officers can put a colored tag on a car like this.

The SCDMV branch on Park Road

We checked the SCDMV office at 122 Park Rd, Lexington, SC 29072, phone 803-356-8537. From downtown that is roughly 2 miles west, as the crow flies. Lexington County may have other offices.

Bring a title showing your own name, its first assignment filled out with the buyer's details, mileage, sale amount and sale date. Report the sale on Form 416. If you are not putting the plate on another car you own, turn it in with Form 452 and cancel the liability insurance. No title at all? A duplicate is $15, and junk car with no title explains the state's route for cars twelve model years or older.

Getting an offer

Lexington car that won't go? Phone (877) 421-6008 or reach us online. Pickup is free anywhere in the US; we can collect it from a home on a cul-de-sac, a lot off Highway 378, or a shop where it is stuck. Columbia is about 18 miles away and Aiken about 43. For statewide rules, see South Carolina.