Fear & Loathing The Classic Car Dealer

right! just dont lie about the condition of the car....

 

I’m pretty sure I bought my hot rod from the dealer Raywith described. I’d been saving money and searching around for a project that would fit my limited skills, experience, and time commitment. I found a car on a popular auction site that I thought fit the bill, but the “buy it now” price was twice as much as I was willing to spend.
As fate would have it, I found myself driving through the very town where the car was located on the way to pick up my precious wife from the airport. Having my older son (8 years old at the time) with me, I figured we should stop by and take a look. We rolled in and they took us out to look at the car. It was way in the back covered by a tarp (no door glass), but after a battery charge, it busted off and idled decently. I asked and was told a price that was less than the price online but still thousands over my budget. So I started to make my exit, when the salesman suggested I meet his boss and make an offer.
So now I’m face to face with the python……I make my offer a little below what I have to spend and he said, “ok lets do it”. I shit my pants. Truthfully, I didn’t think he was going to take my offer, but he called my bluff and I honored by offer. As we were signing the paper work, my son started to cry and I asked him what was wrong, he said “It’s a piece of junk, Dad!”
I didn’t have the means to take the vehicle with me that day, so the seller agreed to store it for free until I could pick it up. So we part ways and I make it on time to pick up my wife and younger son at the airport, we greet and she immediately knows something’s up. Well that’s another story…..
A couple of days later I’m on craigslist and I see an ad for a car like the one I just bought, in fact after looking at the pics, it is the same car I just bought. I shit my pants again! I call the number in the ad and the guy is ready to sell me the car right there until I tell him that I already bought it from the car dealer….silence on the line. I call the dealer and they tell me it’s all due to miscommunication and they were selling the car for somebody else on consignment. Needless to say, I got the car back home a couple of days later and after some sweat and worry, got the title from the dealer.
Three years later I can say I learned a lot from the transaction. I realize now that I probably paid too much for my car, but I have enjoyed getting it back on the road. Currently, my son still thinks it’s a piece of junk, but admits that it’s pretty cool.

 

The fact that the car should not be misrepresented goes without saying for me.... that's the only reason I didn't mention it.

Nothing else in Ryan's whole senario was out of line - 'cept where the government taxed the hell out of Matha's estate & took her family's inheritance...

Scott was a dumbass on a few different levels & bought a car he really couldn't afford.

JH

 

Of course, as some have said, "buyer beware". (and seller too, for that matter) But...the "that's life" attitude bothers me. It can be a rationalization and a justification for fucking someone over...you know...very close to the idea of "Hey...life is hard...I can't afford to be completely honest." And "Hey...everybody does it, so it's ok...I'm just gettin' with the program."

I've got news for people like this. In the end...after everything is said and done...you can't afford not to be honest. But some people don't think like that, and such words mean nothing to them.

BTW...Ryan said some...not all. More than once.

Side note: Among names such as "Janet", "Francis", etc...looks like we've got another name to indicate a particular kind of personality. Don't be a "Teddy".

 

I'm not a dealer, but I have bought and sold a lot of cars over the years. Made some good money on a few of 'em, too- but it doesn't make me a bad guy. It helps finance my stuff I'm keeping.

Say I'm driving through rural Tennessee here, and grandpa has pulled his old farm truck out to the fence, like it's for sale. I stop and ask about it, let him know I'm local, hear his story, and decide a one owner farm truck that's been sitting for 10 or so years is worth his asking price of $1000.

I drag it home, go through the brakes, put some tires on it, new battery, fluids, hoses, belts, clean it up some- hey, I have a pretty decent runner for parts fetchin'..
So, six months down the road, I'm at a swap meet, some guys' digging my truck- "What wouldja take" he says. "$2500" I say. He buys it, drives it home. Everybody's happy. Maybe he puts it on eBay, and it brings $4500. Maybe he drives the wheels off of it, and gives it to his kid ten years from now. Have I done anything wrong?

Point is, this has been the last 30 years of my life. I don't make a living from it, but I do seize opportunities when I see 'em. There's old iron everywhere if you have a little play money. I'm sure a lot of you guys have bought stuff too good to pass up, too- even if you didn't need it. Guy who bought the truck would've never seen it, living in the city. The last o.t. Z/28 I sold, I sent the guy over 80 pictures cos he was 3 hours away. Told him exactly everything about the car, down to the last detail and rock chip. He bought it over the phone, and was ecstatic when he picked it up. Anybody I've sold a car to has been happy, I wouldn't want anybody wasting a trip. We've wasted 100,000+ miles of driving to see misrepresented stuff, I'm sure. But I run into folks all the time at shows, etc. that I've sold stuff to, and can hold my head up every time. Folks who have bought stuff from me will call me up years later if they're looking for something else, or just to see if I know of anything.

There's bad apples in every kind business, no sense being mad at anybody.

Unsuspecting buyers are always victims of their own ignorance.

 

Yaaaaaaayyyy!!!

Quick story. My brother deals cars...mostly muscle cars. My niece and nephew (young with 4 kids) had a '69 Mach I Mustang to sell. My brother caught wind of it, and went to see. He told my nephew it was only worth about $6,000. He bought it, then sold it for over twice that amount. (I only heard of this after the fact, otherwise I would've intervened) By all rights, being family, my brother should've used his resources to sell my nephew's car for him. Asshole thief.

 

They offer a certain type of service for certain types of clients, same as many other businesses.

I would argue that the bondo-respray-flippers and the mega-buck-investor auctions are more detrimental to the hobby.

 

Maybe there is no point. But if there really is no purpose for them, they'll fade away. Obviously they offer something right now, or people wouldn't be willing to pay these driven-up prices.

In a perfect world, the guy that ended up buying the Buick at the end of the story would have been driving by the old lady's house and bought it without the dealer. But he wasn't in the right place at the right time. In the end, he still bought the car he wanted, and good or bad, the dealer made that happen. What if the car had been better and the brakes hadn't gone out?

 

I have quite a few things to say about your thought process here Ryan. I'll respect your opinion though, which is definitely wrong. I'll limit this to a few thoughts:

She could be one of those people that lets the car sit out forever waiting for someone to pay her price, all the while the car is rotting and becoming worth less each day that goes by.

She could live in a small town that has no market for such a car, and a dealer may have the ability to get that car to the right market and make a profit in doing so.

She could run a website that ruins people's lives by sucking them away from their jobs and keeps them glued to the screen looking at hot rods all day. Now there's a guilty sucker if I ever seen one!

Also, I bought my '40 from a dealer, and got it for MUCH less than I ever could have from someone in the hobby. It wasn't a classic car dealer though, so maybe that's a different story.

At the end of the day, it's just like everything else. You'll find honest dealers, you'll find crooked dealers. You can also find honest pastors, and crooked pastors. You can find honest politicians, you can find..... Scratch that one. There's good people and bad people in any business. I don't fault anyone for their choice of business, just for their choices in business.

Interesting read.

 

LOL, if I still had it, I would be more than happy too. But, it has now become one with the Golden State.

But just to add to my story; sure, if I had been living in Kansas and things were different I could have probably gotten the same truck off some old framer for $500, but that just isn't how the world works and I don't expect it to. But whatever, I'm still pretty happy with the deal 10 years down the road and I still consider Paul a friend and hope to meet up with him some day.

Also, I didn't join the hamb until 2007, five years after I got the truck off of him. I thought it was funny when I saw him on here and realized it was him and we reconnected. The world is a strange and funny place and everybody plays a part for better or worse. I try my best to focus on the better as much as I can and avoid the worst.

Here is a photo of the truck out at Povertyflats from Paul's original listing. He didn't try to pull any wool over my eyes and this photo and others showed pretty much what I was getting and pretty much just what I got.

 

That was a good read, Boss. And on most of that I will agree with you whole heartedly... particulalry the bit where Scotty gets strung out on old Oxys and loses everything except the rotting Rivi. ;-)

However, I admit to willfully walking into a similar situation just a few weeks ago, and I am a "car guy"... I know better. But I did it anyway and it was kind of amusing to listen to the banter and cliche crap rolling out of the guy's mouth. Sometimes its fun to just play dumb and see how hard someone's willing to go to snow you.

But, I was in the market for a daily driver that got better mileage than my truck and being a self-described "car guy" I wanted an older car that I could repair that had the great looks and didn't make me feel like a douche in a Camry. So I overlooked the obvious bullshit about "got it out of a barn of a little old lady" and the obvious Bondo and missing trim pieces and reached a fair price for a running and driving and mechanically sound car that cost me pennies to register, will never have to pass a state inspection again and fills my need to drive a piece of American steel with a little style.

Did I get swindled? Mmmmm... maybe a little. But knowing what the Classic Car Salesman is all about took a little of the sting out. In fact, because I was hip to it and knew how the whole system works, I took it all in stride and drove away with my asshole only slightly stretched out but my "car guy" dignity still in check. ;-)

 

"Offering something to the industry" doesn't put food on the table.

When no one needs/uses them, they will go out of business.

Until then, these guys are in business to make a living - most because they love it. How can anyone fault them for that - if they run an honest business?

JH

 

I find the story simple and brave, reasons I love the HAMB.
I have seen people get hosed from thier best car friends, Ive seen people knock on widows doors just to resell at actual market value from the disgustingingly under valued purchase.
Its a hobby that costs as much as it makes. You buy,sell and build to keep going.
Ive worked on enough, visually inspected for, and flat out told people to get rid of stuff purchased from dealers and ebay. Not all were bad.

The ones that do well with thier purchases are the educated car guys, sometimes.
The best flipping advice I have ever recieved is," you better like what you buy as you might own it one day". Makes sence

 

Would you care to explain? Suppose you have a car that you're just tired of. Time for something different. You've had it for 15+yrs and you have $8500 in it. Today it's worth triple that on the open market. Would you sell it for market value or for $8500?

 

Minus the dead old lady (as far as I know anyway) and me being strung out, I was scotty. I got bent all the way over, but it could have been avoided If I had done my homework, not been so trusting and most importantly, trusted my gut. BTW, the guy that violated me posts here, so be careful...

 

OK, so old car dealers don't give anything back.

But the old car parts dealers who swoop in and save cars from getting scrapped, then part them out over the internet, saving whatever is savable and getting the pieces into the hands of the needy builders, all while making some kind of a living at it, they're the good guys, right?....Right?

At least, that's what I tell myself. I can sell parts all day, but I hate when I have to sell a car. People expect so much and rarely seem to have the money to back up the offers when they do make them. I don't know how those old car dealers stay in business, where do they find their buyers?

 

I liked what you wrote. I have a business selling parts and try to be honest and I deal with my share of dis honest people. I was selling parts at the Portland Swap Meet and a guy came up and asked me if I was working on a second Hot Rod. He already knew I had one. I asked him how did he know I was working on a second one and he said he really didn't know but that if I was working on a second one he wanted to buy the first one. I told him I wouldn't sell the first one because I would lose too much money. He was honest and I was honest. As W.C. Fields said: "You can't cheat an honest man."

 

I liked the article and can relate. I bought a piece of rust from a dealer on Craigslist. I look at it this way, you are getting that car away from someone who can't and won't love on it like you as a new owner can. As usual when I want to buy something it is the most desireable model and priced accordingly, if I went to sell the same car it's the least desireable model also priced accordingly.

 

The first sentence in your second paragraph says it perfectly with so few words. Jay Y.

 

"Capitalism"... it can prey on the ignorant and naive. I personally like searching for what i m looking for. the longer it takes the more knowledge i absorb. The masses love the easy way out that what makes them the target for the middle man. Its a shame that some of these abandoned projects that people got in over there head end up scrap because of it.

 

Agree for the most part but I feel that there are also some honest ones. Have sold a couple thru dealers over the years and they told me straight up what they would pay and that they had to make at least 10% on their money. They sold the cars and made a handsome profit BUT I got what I wanted and didn't have to deal with the grinders, lookyloos,bottom feeders and other questionable types coming to my house and the bull shit that goes along with it--they have access to buyers that I could probably never find and paid immediately upon the culmination of the sale-did they misrepresent the car?? don't think so as they gave me the number of any prospective buyer that had questions,etc. Could I have sold them myself?? maybe but then I would have had to deal with wierd people at my house--no Thanks.

 

Ryan, I guess I agree with some of your editorial, and disagree with some as well. These guys stay in business as a result of buying low and selling high. I understand that; the issue I believe you take exception to is the unscrupulous practices that a goodly majority use in purchasing, then reselling the car. I agree with you, they are weasels.

Due diligence: I have bought cars for the past 50 years, for my own use. I haven't bought and "flipped" any of them. I like the journey in doing a frameoff and then selling or trading to begin the journey again. I always put "eyes" on these purchases before buying. I have traveled up to 600 miles to do same. My reaction to those who buy sight unseen is: buyer beware.

I have friends and acquaintences who see their cars as cherry, and I and others see them as OK or far from cherry. They see their car in their eyes and represent it as so. Are they liars or crooks, No. One man's junk......

I also know that with this HAMB family, folks have asked members to check out cars for them when distance has been a factor. There are other ways to do it as well, NSRA fellow pages, licensed appraisers and so on. A litle dough upfront could save a lot later and less misery.

Just my take on this. Look at the car yourself, or have a trusted person do it for you, or be prepared to be potentially disgusted with the seller and process. Gary

 

Agree with Foxspeed--everyone has a different opinion on condition of cars--even though they may think it's good, you may not--look at it yourself--saves alot of grief. If you are selling a part or whatever, describe it honestly and don't embellish condition--then buyer won't be disappointed.

 

150 years ago, it would be about a Livery Stable and a Horse with worn Shoes & Mediocre teeth.

Cheats & Slime have been around since time began.

 

I'll take a crack at that.....
The 'classic' dealers offer a broader range of choices to potential buyers in their area. If there wasn't a classic dealer, all the choices available would be local cars that everybody's seen or owned or whatever.
What you're failing to acknowledge is not everybody has access to, or chooses to use technology to find or sell classic cars. And then there's that thing about "I ain't buying nothing I can't touch or feel in advance"
I've sold to some big name dealers over the years. Got what I wanted without lying about anything. I don't begrudge them making hundreds or thousands off my efforts. They assumed the risk, as there are no guarantees in the car bidness Contrary to popular belief, there's not money made on every car.
Harrison's right on the money It's a business, and both sides should be 'aware' before money changes hands. Unethical people thrive on the uninformed, and the results give the dealers (ALL of them) a black eye.
You wanna castigate an industry?---take a hard look at the jewelry business

 

Ryan,

I completely understand your thoughts on the subject as they echo what I've been saying for years.

We have a number of "Classic Car" dealers in this area and I know the drill when it comes to their pricing...as do most of us who've followed these cars, and their prices, for decades.

However, even after saying that, I know a number of people who are into cars, but DON'T have the day-to-day price lists burned into their brains as some of us do, and can't understand the "system".

A good example is: The "Classic Car" dealer will have a good-to-nice ride for sale for, say, $24,500.00. I've seen the car, know that even a near-mint one exactly like it should go for no more than, maybe, $14,000. (And, if you're buying from out-of-state, remember you'll have to add transportation charges to the final tally.)

Later, I see that the car has sold (and some of the dealers with eBay accounts sell to Europe also), mention it to one particular "car guy" friend of mine, and he says: "Oh well, the dealer has to make some profit too." Some "Profit" ! $10,500.00 for a wax job, letting it sit on your property, writing some Shakespeare-type "flowery" copy (As in: "Only 35,000 copies of this rare model were produced during its calendar year."), and putting it with the other 45 units you have listed on your eBay site. Oh, and the disclaimer that is sometimes added: "We also have the car listed for sale locally, and will notify you if it sells before this online listing expires."

Yes, some dealers are honest. Some aren't. But, as a lifelong car buff, it does bother me to see, and know, the ones who really could care less about the cars that I love and have cherished fond memories of all my life. Those so-called "dealers" could just as well be selling computers, cameras, swimming pools, dog food, or anything else that had a price tag on it. To my chagrin, they just happened to choose cars. And, after I size up their establishment & honesty, I sometimes avoid them like the plague.

Thanks again, Ryan.


Jonnie www.legends.thewwbc.net

 

Im kinda like you. Cant seen to sell a vehicle for as much as I would pay for another like it. I have sold one neighbor 7 vehicles. They went from sitting & rotting at my place to Sitting& rotting at his. Most of the time I cant even get scrap price . I dont wholeheartedly share Ryans opinion. However there is such a thing as KARMA. I try to tell everything I know that is wrong with any car im selling. I try to leave a little room for the next guy. If you buy I dont care what you do with or to it . Its yours and I hope you make money. As you go through life you shouldnt take unfair avantage & shouldnt let anyone take unfair avantage of you. The definition of unfair advantage Is determined by each person in their own manner. OldWolf

 

There are some good dealers out there, but I agree with you Ryan. Some are just there to make a quick buck. I always hate to walk through the classic car lot and see tons of cars that are being listed with prices that are 30-50% more than the car is worth.

 

OK I have given this some thought and I am pretty sure that I have not posted on this thread.

My take on it is this, classic car dealers are just used car dealers. Used car dealers have never really had a good reputation although there have been some honest used car dealers that were just trying to make a living.

I know at least one classic car dealer that I would buy a car from sight unseen from his word alone. I'll bet I have come across at least a dozen more that I would not take a freebe from because somehow I would take a beating on it. Same with used car dealers, I have known a couple in my life time that were honest as the day is long and not out there to make a killing just wanted to feed their family. I have come across dozens in my life time that would cheat their mom.

I think the distinction here is not the name of the business at all; it is all about integrity. I have yet to meet someone with integrity that was trying to take advantage of anyone.

Ryan I am not sure of the intent of your article, but what I come away from it with is that you should always operate with integrity no matter what you do. If that happens to be selling classic cars or sweeping floors it should all be the same.

I am pretty sure that the only folks taking offense at your article are those who took a look at what they are doing and realized that you were talking about them.