::Typically our Question Of the Day blog items are shorter, but I’m in a bit of a story-telling mood with the holidays and all. Hopefully you guys are as well::
As anyone that knows me will confirm, I am a bit of a crazy old cat lady when it comes to cars; if I had the money and the space, I’d own hundreds of them.
Of course, I don’t have enough of either of the two, so I compensate by getting extremely attached to the vehicles that I do own. Some I formed a bond with immediately (‘87 Chevy Monte Carlo SS and ‘00 Subaru Impreza 2.5RS), while others took a memorable road trip to the Carolinas (‘99 Nissan Altima) or a good hard winter or two (‘03 Subaru Impreza WRX, or as my dad called it: The “Snow Tank”) for me to grow fond of them.
As all good things must eventually come to an end, so does ownership of most cars. Other than my SS, the 2.5RS was one of my favorite cars to drive. As Subaru chose to spite us Americans by refusing us a turbocharged Impreza until 2002, the 2.5RS was top dog (I use that term very very loosely) with a whopping 165 HP and a non-functional hood scoop to boot. Didn’t matter, as that car was a blast to drive, especially with snow tires and several inches of snow on the ground. I foolishly sold the car when my uncle offered to sell me his WRX for a steal of a price, and I’m kicking myself even now as it’s almost impossible to find another example of a rust-free 93-01 Impreza in New England. At least I can sleep well knowing that it went to a good home, although I still miss it every time I see snow in the forecast.
However, not all of my cats…er, cars went on to live on with a buyer that would treat them well. For example, my WRX was sold with the promised intent of it being restored and reborn as a track car. Turns out that needed rust repair was a little too much for the new owner, so the decision was made to cut it up and use it as a donor car for a Factory Five 818 kit car. No word yet on if the first sawzall cut has been made…
While I can understand cutting up the WRX as it will live on as a brand spanking new track toy with a sexy new body, there’s one buyer that, years later, I still regret selling one of my cars to.
Let’s set the scene:
It’s the winter of 2006 and the eBay listing for my bone stock ‘88 Monte Carlo SS with all of 65,000 miles on it had just ended (Yes, I’ve personally owned enough G-bodies to fill a small parking lot. I consider it more of a habit than an addiction. I can quit at any time, really!). I wasn’t particularly happy with selling the car as it had been my daily driver for over a year, but as a college student that was driving a ton of miles I could no longer afford the gas. Plus, the car had some serious rust issues that needed to be repaired so I knew that the car needed to be sold to someone that would restore it and enjoy it.
Enter our eBay buyer from Florida:
The guy wins the auction on a Friday morning and drives through a snowstorm to pick up the car that Saturday afternoon, but only after flogging the car up and down the street and haggling on the bid price that he agreed to pay. Still, the guy stated that he was restoring the car, so off it went through the snow back to sunny Florida.
Six months pass, and I receive an email from the new owner stating that he needed a new copy of the title due to “issues” with the original title. $50 later (Of which I was never repaid), a new copy of the title was mailed to him.
Fast forward to the end of 2006, and I receive a phone call from my father: “I know that you have a lot of cars, but did you happen to leave one in Florida by any chance?”
Uh, what?!?
Turns out that the State of Florida was calling as my car (It was never registered to the new owner, but he apparently had been driving it around) had been in impound for several months due to “police activity”, and they were notifying me that it would be crushed in fifteen days if I didn’t pay the storage fees, which amounted to several thousand dollars at this point.
As expected, I concocted a scheme to drive down to Florida and rescue the car, but common sense (Not mine, but from my family and future wife) won out and I let the car go to the crusher after calling the impound yard and explaining the situation.
To this day, every once in a while I’ll see a lower mileage G-body cross the auction platform and wonder What If.
So, that’s my long-winded story: How about you? Ever had a car that you sold to the Wrong Buyer, and if so what happened to it?
We spent the better part of a year cleaning/fixing/restoring a ’77 Firebird. The last thing was to get the spoiler/ flares and shaker hood and turn it into a ‘Trans Am” We got it painted and it was fantastic. The only thing I didn’t like was the slushbox box, but lots of people can’t drive a manual so…..
Two boys come to look at it. The older one looked about 17, the younger one had a pocketful of cash. It sold. The town was small and I frequently saw that car at or near the high school. It seemed to never get washed, ran on an ugly spare (for what seemed like a year) and the last time I saw it some girl was driving it and the passenger side was crushed all the way down the length.
Sad times…
It wasn’t a car, but a bike, a Suzuki GS500F. Not a particularly dangerous ride as far as sport bikes go. As these stories often go, the new owner failed to register it. I’d kept a bill of sale on file, just in case.
So, about two months after I sold it, the cops called my house one night. At 10 PM. They said they’d found the bike on the side of the road and were looking for the owner. I gave them what contact info I had for the new owner. They didn’t say anything about the condition of the bike, but I doubt the cops would have called at 10 PM if they’d found it rubber side down and parked on its kickstand.
I hope my bike didn’t land its buyer in the ICU… or the morgue.
Back in 1982, I had a rotten ’74 Dart Sport 360. Over the year I owned it, rust had eaten the K-member, allowing the LCA to move around, changing the caster, camber & toe while driving. A white-knuckle ride to say the least! I finally parked it before I wrecked it.
I placed an ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, clearly stating it was a PARTS car. A guy shows up a week later, I jack up the front end and show him the problem, explaining how unsafe the car is. He pays me my asking price, ans schedules the pick up.
He then shows up with his 17-year old brother who is going to drive the thing home! After reminding him of the unsafe condition, little brother floors it takes off in a cloud of smoke, the front tires squealing because of the extreme toe out.
Dont know if they made it home, but I never saw that car again.
Sold a clean 68 Dart to my ex-brother in law. He called me a month later and told me he had run over an open manhole and the front wheel had torn off. Said it was my fault and that I should have checked the car out better before I sold it to him!
Or your fault for not putting tank treads on it? Can’t think of much else that would take a hit from an open manhole.
My father sold a white ’64 Valiant,very similar to your Violent Valiant project,
to an undeserving abuser.
White, carnation red interior,225 Power-Pak,three on the tree,enough power.
The car was going to be a rebuilt/daily driver-stocker kind of thing,but my father decided to sell it.
The guy had the car about a month and put ‘er on the roof.
He was beating on the car so badly he broke and snapped the leaf spring support and dumped the rear wheel momentum on the road.
While not a Mopar man,I came to like the lil’ Valiant and am following your Violent Valiant project.
never sell a car to a friend. knowing somebody and dealing with them is two different things. at the time I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I did. lost a good friend; I’ve regretted ever since….
That goes for fixing your friends’ cars too.
If your ’88 is the one pictured, I have a very sad story for you…
I had an ’87 T-top just that color scheme. Bought it when I was 16 and careless. When the lights failed, tilt column started coming apart and it wasn’t safe to drive anymore, I traded it for a ’78 LeBaron coupe. I saw it three weeks later, repainted, restriped and sitting perfect.
I learned from a spiteful ex-girlfriend that she had talked some guy she had dated after I moved away into buying it for her. He kept it for himself, dumped her, painted it black, built it up pretty well…and in the winter of 2002, horseshoed it around a phone pole in south Colorado Springs.d
Yup, that was the actual car. Loved the grey interior/silver exterior combo.
Dropped a rebuilt L-78 396/M-21 into a ’70 Cutlass. (Back when stuff like that was cheap). Kept it about a year and sold it to a local kid. His Dad thought it would make a great high school graduation gift. Within a month or so the kid lost control, ran it into the local PA State Police Barracks parking lot, hit a light pole, which fell across the hoods of 3 troopers personal vehicles. A buddy of mine bought the remains for the drivetrain.
Had a beautiful 1970 Swinger, owned it for 12 years. I decided to build a faster car because I didn’t want to cut this car up, so I got a 1968 Dart that was already caged. Anyways I sold the Swinger to a friend of my dads and he trashed it before selling it off to someone else. I still kick my ass about that car today and it has been 12 years!
The only wrong buyer I ever ran across was one who didn’t bring enough cash to buy the car, HA!
Gee, weird that there have been a few Valiant ones…my son in law bought a hotted up 66 Valiant that looked nice but had a zillion problems. He knows nothing about cars so I got lumbered with fixing it up, he could never understand why we kept needing to shovel cash into it and so finally he wanted to sell it. Lots of tyre kickers came and went and eventually we got an email from a young guy in Port Lincoln ( about a 12 hour drive away) who asked a few questions then said yep I’ll buy it, sight unseen. I was just leaving for work one morning when a cab arrived out the front – this guy, his girlfriend a suitcase and a wad of cash. Took one look and handed me the cash. Now I’d been very up front about the condition and issues this car had – and while I was glad to get rid of it I said `sooo, are you getting a trailer, or? ‘ thinking how are you going to get a car with many things wrong with it back to Port Lincoln?? Chucks the suitcase in the back seat and is backing out the drive, saying ` I’ll drive it, of course…’ he hadn’t even test driven it at that point….so, I go to work, and about 1 pm get this phone call with this bangbangbang noise in the background – its the guy going off his nut because 3 front wheel studs just sheared (at 120 kays an hour), nearly putting them into a semi…I said ` um, whats that noise??’ he said `thats the wheel trying to come off….’ so even tho that had just happened he was still on the highway, still at 120 kp/h….I often wonder if it ever made it to Lincoln…
Easy solution here is to just NOT sell your car. I had a Olds 98 that I really liked,a 78 and it was a two door but I had no more garage space and just couldn’t keep it,pissed me off but I was kind of torn I didnt want it to get ruined so I gave it (free) to a good friend, and he had it painted and a new top put on and it looks great,it was worth not seeing it get ruined,consider this if you can,its worth it just because of the anguish of seeing it destroyed.
No. Any buyer with the cash is the right buyer.
I kicked my ass for selling a 63 Galaxie 500XL Convertible. But I’ve never kicked my ass for who I sold a car too.
I’ve owned 30+ cars in the past 20 yrs and I would like to have them all back. There are about 5 that I would want more than the others. I had 64 Buick wagon that I traded and the buyer didn’t get the title transferred until after he got it impounded. Also had a 78 Pheonix that I traded for a 79 Grand prix at a used car lot. The lot owner never transferred the title to lot name. Sold it to some young guy who also didn’t transfer the title, and got impounded. Got letter from Cincy PD stating if I wanted it, I would have to pay the fines/fees. Nice car, but wasn’t my problem anymore. I’ve had other idiots that got some of my others over the years too.
I feel your pain! The exact same thing happened to me, with my own G-body. The guy who bought it had his license suspended for drunk driving and was driving the car (drunk again) without a license and with the car unregistered and uninsured. The poor Monte Carlo was towed and I received a letter from the DMV saying I had a month to pay for the fees in order to get my car back… I did like you and listened to my family and let the car be sold in a lot to a scrap yard where it was probably stripped of it’s engine and wheels as they were the pretty much the only good parts on the car and left the car to be crushed 🙁
I’m a little bit north of you, rust free G-bodies are harder and more expensive here but I’ll have another one!
This one will hurt a bit…
I am not an AMC guy, but sometime in the middle 80s I caught a line on a tired out & primered Rebel Machine parked in a trailer park in Flint. Went out and bought it, somehow got it running, and nursed it home. Found out that the primer was covering an otherwise OK car that needed front fenders and a lot of normal service work – brakes, suspension, heater core, exhaust. The original engine had been replaced, but all the rare Machine stuff was intact – scoop, tach, wheels, etc.
After all the stuff was fixed up I gave it a simple garage enamel paint job in the original painfully bright Big Bad Green color – the OE paint was still on the floor pans and door jams – the primer was the beginnings of a previous owner’s effort to go to a less intense color. I drove the car for a few months and sold it to an eager fellow for a nice (at the time) profit.
At one time a few years ago I spoke with the guy handling the Rebel Machine registry and he thought they’d only had one car in the super bright color of “Big Bad Green” – a 4 speed car. I told him that there were at least two because mine was also that color and was an original automatic with title/VIN to prove it. I started asking around about my old car and one day the guy that bought it called me up. He said that he “got in a bad state of mind” a few years ago and simply scrapped it!