I revisited my past recently. A friend of mine who has been in the car business for longer than I’ve been alive called me right out of the blue. It had been well over two recessions since our last talk and yes, there was an awful lot of catching up to do. So the banter lasted about three hours and all we talked about was… how things don’t work in the car business. The list is longer than a modern day health care bill and the prescription is pain (and debt) incarnate. That is unless you decide to take the easy way out. In which case it’s downright fatal. There are thousands of do’s and don’ts in this business. Today I’ll share the Top Five ways many rookies end up scorching the thin skin under their Hawaiian shirts.
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Posts By: Steven Lang
Everyone wants a showhorse car at a workhorse price. When folks find out about my work,they automatically assume that the auction lanes are paved in pure gold. A late-model Honda that’s high in demand? They think I can get one for $5000 under retail when the truth the few I can actually get are already selling at retail. The finance game changes the cost of popular late model cars dramatically as do tax refunds. An unpopular car or one with a minor accident history? Now that’s a different story.
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Some vehicles hit my tightwad tendencies like a nickel split into two quarters. Take this one for example. A base, five-speed unpopular car in an attractive color going through it’s very last year of production. The last of these Optimas went for less money out the door than a mid-level Corolla or Civic thanks to […]
I fell in love with Chrysler back in 1991. Really. The LH sedans were the first four door cars I ever wanted to buy. Sports car looks. 214 horsepower. Of course they were just in the developmental stage back then with only a Viper or two out in the real world. I didn’t care. As I studied more of Chrysler’s other show cars of that time and reflected on the company’s restructuring measures (I was an industry wonk even then), I smelled the opportunity of an 18 year old’s lifetime. I bought 260 shares of Chrysler at just over $10 a share. Two years later I thought LH stood for, “Lordy Hallelujah!” as I spent my newfound fortune on babes and booze. Make that one babe who thankfully became my wife, and a laptop computer.
Some people just don’t get ‘it’. My wife can’t understand why I like Davesfarm videos and Bruce Springsteen. I can’t understand why she listens to whiny effeminate men who pretend to be musicians. Fair enough… we’re living up to our gender driven destinies. But then there’s the myth of an ‘educated’ person.
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There’s something amazing about recessions. Prices can come tumbling down to Earth and the costs of living can all of a sudden be dirt cheap. Yes, I’m aware that my country’s leaders seem fully content on feasting on our future wealth with no concern for the consequences. Fair enough. But I also know a good deal when I see one.
“What should I buy?” Well these days it really doesn’t matter as much as you would think. The marketplace is absolutely riddled with 300+ late models to choose from and most of them are perfectly fine daily drivers. A Toyota? A Buick? A Mitsubishi? For most folks it really doesn’t matter. I’m not kidding. Their footwear is going to have a bigger impact on their quality of life than the car they drive.
But even today’s automotive world has a few cars that will cost more money to maintain per capita than our national debt. I’m not kidding there either. Bad engines. Clunky transmissions. Electric Gremlins worthy of a Steven Spielberg Sequel. Not to mention safety recalls that could even make a Chinese bureaucrat nervous. So without further lawsuits or potential censorship issues from aspiring TTAC sponsors, here they are… (Read More…)
The mind can deviate to all sorts of weirdness when it comes to cars. Baby on Board signs. ‘Rims’ that cost more than the actual vehicle. The ungodly use of purples, yellows and lime greens on entry level econoboxes. Then there’s the real deals. Cars that are so hysterically and vomitously ugly that only it’s creator can appreciate the rancid spewage. I see a lot of that at the auctions. Let me give you a few true classics of the trade…
Today I bought an Astro with a garbage bag for a driver’s window. Three very ugly Cavaliers. A Dodge Ram with a vinyl interior. A brown Chrysler Concorde with a deformed trunk lid. A Ford F150 with plexiglass rear glass. A Tahoe with 235k. A Suburban with a rebuilt title, and a Maxima that doesn’t run… yet. Total cost was about $8500. Why would I buy all this drek? Well, truth be told none of these will be keepers. I won’t be financing them. They won’t be used as rentals. In fact I have absolutely no clue about their long-term durability. I bought them because I needed to fatten up my dealer auction for next Tuesday. Will it work? You bet. (Read More…)
Owning an old Volvo is like having a garden. There is always something to do in a garden. Likewise, the quality of your compost, soil, and water is going to dictate your harvest. The same is true for your driving habits, parts and fluids when it comes to keeping any old car. Okay, enough of the analogies. We’re all enthusiasts here. A 1991 Volvo 740 came to me with a two ton jack and a gas can in the trunk as well as enough spare parts to start it’s own Volvo shrine. It also came with the crappiest car seat covers I had ever seen, a blue wire that connected the alternator to trunk speakers that were removed (it had been Gomered). Finally, it had to be pushed through the auction lane because it wouldn’t stay running. But I bought it anyway for $175… and then the fun began.
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Does retail always give you the best return when it comes to cars? The reflexive answer is ‘yes’. But the real answer is ‘It depends’. I’ve seen cars bought at dealer auctions that don’t have a chance in a felon’s hell of reclaiming their outrageous price. This week there was a Barney inspired purple 1998 Dodge Caravan with 118k that sold for $3000. That one will have to be financed to a hardcore Prince fan with a brood. A little while back I also saw this Farley inspired van go for $5800. That one is still at the dealer’s lot begging for monetary penance. Of course, these two extreme examples are somewhere between a lightning strike and a snow flurry in Atlanta. So what’s the norm? (Read More…)
Yesterday I sold a 1992 Lexus LS400. It was a well kept model with all the bells and whistles for it’s time. Hands-free cell phone. 250 horsepower V8. Sunroof, ABS, plenty of wood interior accents. For 195,000 miles it was a really great car. At the time it drove off I was speaking to a journalist from Reuters who was covering the Toyota recall. A mental somersault happened at that very moment. While I watched the Lexus pull away and kept on discussing the industry wide battle to contain costs, I looked at a few of my older cars. A 1993 Town & Country, still in great condition. A 1995 Cavalier that could easily go another eight to ten years. A 1997 Pontiac Sunfire Convertible that still drove like it was virtually new. Three cars. All of which were of seemingly dubious reputations for their time all had a good shot of hitting the big 20. I realized something in that very moment…
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I hate spending money. To me the act of letting go of my hard earned dollars is the equivalent of forced labor at a future point in my life. Not that I won’t pay for things that I really enjoy. Family, vacations (within reason), educational tools, and even good friends are on that radar. But cars are ‘things’ and most of them are used for the miseries of daily commuting. An activity I rank right up there with filling out paperwork and paying bills. How do I keep those dollars and time where it belongs? I simply plan for the future and invest when necessary.
A quarter century ago, give or take a year, my brother Paul became the first in the family to drive a Toyota. A 1984 Toyota Celica-Supra. It was a true shifting of gears for the Lang Gang. Everyone up to that time had bought a GM. Mom and Dad drove Cadillacs (only one saw 100k). The eldest one had a Monte Carlo (a.k.a. Crapo) that didn’t see the road half the time. Second in line had a Regal (a.k.a. the dying diesel) that ended up stolen and trashed in the Grand Canyon. He actually felt sorry for the Canyon. Within three years both these Roger Smith specials were replaced with 1988 Celica GT’s. Great cars with no nicknames necessary. Three years later I had a Celica GT-S sitting on my driveway. Even better. Still no nicknames. By the end of the decade everyone in the family had a Toyota. But then things changed…
Back in 2007, I made my 37th pilgrimage to mouse country. My wife and kids were hardcore Disneyites. Me? I was just there for the company. I deal with enough Goofys in real life and the thought of waiting in line to meet yet another one chafed at me. So I told my wife that I would spend the next day visiting my own wonderland. An auto auction. There was a low mileage Geo Metro I was interested in along with about a half dozen other older vehicles.
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