Buying cars....the wrong way to go about it.

i have a feeling these are pretty much ALL going to be ebay stories! ;D

tash bought the econoline blind. she wanted something to tow with, and be able to sleep in at the pod. she put in a bid and we were away for the weekend and came back to find she'd won. And it was in wales.

so we get a train to wales, get there in the dark - matt black wagon in pitch black, yeah looks ok - and drive it the however many hundred miles home.

that thing ruled, it was the coolest car in the world - and then we realised the chassis was rusty as hell. She sold it on, and as it was being hoiked onto a lowloader it wripped off the front steering and suspension

Brought an M Reg Escort 1.8TD from a bloke I used to work with. Never seen it, until I went to pick it up from his house.

Payed £150 for it. Was brilliant!!! Well, as far as daily hacks go, it was one of the best ones. Sold it to my partners dad a year later for £500 ;D

This!


For sale everywhere; Custom car, free-ads, classic ford etc. every time i saw a new ad it got £50-100 cheaper. eventually got it for £550, afterseeing it in the dark for a bit!

had to pick it up from 25m away which was ok but in two bits! so had to go back with (last in hire shop) flatbed transit to get the uninstalled V8! V funny thinking of us two muscle men shifting it off the truck! ;D

It was all bad, except rust situation and the interior

Made most my investments (which stood at about £900+ish) back, a bloke got it on the road shortly after(couple months) and styling great, Good man. and I learnt a lot from it, so its a happy ending!

I doubt it in my case I've been buying cars for years pre-ebay but I'll post one up while I have time

I bought a Carlton 3.0 CDX Estate from the free adds - went to view it and it was a tired old shed cosmetically shocking but mechanically brilliant with a rare manual box - cheap as chips and I needed a mobile skip so I offered silly money and walked away.... Didn't get far before called back to OK it needs to go deal done

OK the car shortly after I got it – the wolfraces I put on it same day as I had em lying around and the tyres that were on the car when I drove it home were horribly illegal (I’m a cheapskate.)





Anyway 3 days later I went to collect a set of wheels for the Monza (free ads again) from miles away and took the CDX - bloke I bought the wheels from said neighbour has got one that's gonna be free at the end of month as it failed it's MOT (put in month early) so was gonna scrap it

I said let me know or get her to ring me cos I'd be interested.

Phone call and a week later I got to go pick it up still unseen - mechanically wanked - gearbox (auto lost 1 speed another about to die) Diff howled like pinions were trying to get out!!! but cosmetically mint.

Couldn't have it for free so gave her a donation for the contents of the tank!!!

Drove it home on the day the tax and MOT ran out!!!

Best bit - same colour!!!!!





One weekend later and one mechanically sound and cosmetically solid Carlton 3.0 CDX estate this being trailered up to the local tip







There you go first one

Our Mini was our first blind purchase. Decided to get one and had a quick look for local Minis on Ebay so we could go and look at one. Spot this sweet little City E in metallic blue. Only two photos, fairly short description but it included words like "solid" and "12 months MOT."

Only three hours left on the auction and it was at £650. Then £700. Then £720 with 15 mins to go. Got carried away and bid £741 which won it!

Turns out that it was going to be scrapped hence forklift had done some damage to the exhaust. System was very rotten suggesting it had been sitting for ages. But with 35k on the clock, a fresh MOT pass (once they had welded the exhaust up!) and extremely solid underside and some brand new chrome bumbers, we decided we'd done pretty well.

That was in June and it has already done over 6000 miles with hardly a problem!

Got carried away then and bid on a Maestro sight unseen. It was curse word.

Before I even had eBay as an excuse I bought a 1968 Plymouth Fury III sedan out of the Autotrader which was in Cornwall. Bloke sounded OK on the phone, seemed a decent guy, he said the car was OK, he's had it some years... So I mailed him a cheque and sent a car transport firm to pick it up for me.

Well, went the day not well... The transporter didn'r realise how far away Cornwall was so he set off too late to get back with it at a reasonable hour. The first I saw of my new purchase was at 1 am and my girlfriend (now wife - she doesn;t learn either) was fuming. No hiding a car like at at 1 am now is there.

Even under streetlights it looked hideous. It was apparently a movie prop car from Saigon. It looked well ropey in the flesh. Finished in olive drab with white stars on the doors and rusty bumpers. Well, we started it uip on the transporter and the exhausts were both blown right out. V8 engine echoing off the windows of all the neighbours windows. Next I discover the trans is bvggered. Almost no drive in it. So I have to rev the motor up to about 3000 RPM just to get it off the transporter, and then I have to do a three point trun in the road (oh, did I mention none of the lights worked and of course it was pitch dark) and yes, you can stall an automatic! well, I limped it up onto the drive. When Em was finally speaking to me (about 2 days later) she proffessed that it was a steaming pipe of poopoo and that I'd end up scrapping it.

She was right. Whole sections had been "skillfully" made out of filler and the think leaked like a sieve. The wiring was the worst hashup I ever saw and nothing worked. It was also a complete nightmare to find a buyer for. Selling old yank cars threough the local papers etc. brings a whole nother breed of loonies out to waste your time and destroy your faith in the goodness of humanity.

The engine and trans ended up in a 1957 Plymouth Suburban owned by a mate of a mate and the seats got transplanted into his mate's Impala. The rest of it is now razor blades, tin cans and the like.



Then there was the Victor I went all the way to Kent with a trailer to pick up (it was at least free) and then when I got it home decided it was so bad there weren't even any useful spares on it so I gave it away. In fact I made it a condition of sale when I sold another car to this bloke that he took the blue car with it.

I bought the Lada off E-bay without viewing it for £100, it only had 1 months MOT left on it as well

Get the train 200 miles north to Scunthorpe, because the guy who sold it was busy that day I didn't even get to meet him, he left it unlocked on his drive with the keys behind the sun-visor and V5 pre-filled out ;D

So I find the Lada sitting there, jump in and drive straight back, didn't miss a beat

Then when the MOT ran out and I saw it would need welding, I chopped the tax in got £40 for that! Stuck the car back on E-bay and went for £100 again About the only time I have made profit on a car

I really regret not buying it off you!

Bought all of my cars on photos alone really!

Mira Classic - Bought off a guy selling it on a Daihatsu forum who had inherited it from his late sister, one owner, turned out to absolutely mint condition with no rust at all, was garaged all its life etc. Paid a brilliant price for it, nice bloke! Went down one week to view/pay for it then went back to collect it a few weeks later once my insurance etc. was sorted.

Avanzato - Bought off someone looking to sell it online, my details were passed to him. Not as nice condition as the Mira Classic but was never claimed to be, paid a good price for it as a project and got it trailered back. Nice honest seller again!

Charmant - Hatsu off here asked me if I wanted to buy it. I was seen at the cash point moments after! Top seller of course. Was kind of banking on getting it as I'd bought a one-way train ticket. I didn't want to waste the tenner I'd spent on the one day insurance.

Thing is with these obscure Daihatsu models, you have to kind of take what you see. People are all like get scouring the ads and arrange to see all of them! But in all honestly you'll see a Mira Classic or Avanzato for sale once every month at best and Charmants probably never. You just have to wait for them to come to you.