This is definitely a scam. But what is missing in your description is how the 'buyer' became aware that your car was for sale and what sort of terms are involved.
Scammers LOVE to use Craigslist to find pricey things to purchase, but this scam can also happen on eBay, and other sales mediums as well. They will email you or call you and tell you that your price is acceptable, after all, they aren't going to be paying money for it anyway, so why quibble?
Next they will pretend to send you money via Paypal. You'll get an email that appears to be from Paypal, often with mispelled or misused words and/or poor grammar. The link to log onto Paypal will be included with the email. Do NOT click on that link. If they have really paid via Paypal, you can confirm the funds by logging in the normal way. In this way you'll see your real activity.
Too often the link they send you will look like a log on web page, but will really be a fake web page. When you enter your ID and password, it will fail and you'll get a message saying that the ID and/or password wasn't right. So then you try a second time and voila, you get to log in. The fake page collects your ID and password and they save that to sell to other scammers. The second time around is the real Paypal log on page which gives the appearance of legitimacy. At this point change you password as soon as possible to avoid future abuse of your account.
But they aren't done with you. What they are really after is to get your car for free and then on top of that some extra money from you on top of that. I've seen a number of variations of this scam over the years.
If you have sold this via Craigslist, you must insist on dealing with the buyer in person to make sure this is the car they really want. Craigslist makes this point rather clearly. Usually, they will arrange to have their people come out to pick up the vehicle plus title after they have pretended to pay via paypal. They will be in a big hurry to wrap up the whole deal, before you figure out you're being hosed. Once they're gone with your car you'll never see them again nor will you have a way to find them. Oftentimes, if they really make payment to you, it is through a stolen account so that after your item has been sent to them, Paypal will turn around and declare the payment to you to be null and void. I had this happen to me once three months after the fact!
Another troubling thing here is they want you to send money to them for shipping the car. Wait! THAT wasn't part of the deal!
Even eBay does not let people pay for the entire cost of a car via paypal, just a small portion of it.
I guarantee that this is a scam!
