It’s one thing to find a car featured on Curbside Classics for sale on Craigslist or Ebay… in fact, according to our trackbacks, a number of used car sellers have even taken to linking to the relevant CC in their online ads. But finding a beast of a Packard Clipper that Paul Niedermeyer himself once called “the biggest find of the year so far” for sale for the low, low price of $4,700 (as of current bidding) just doesn’t happen every day. If you’re on the West Coast and you’re looking to scratch that hard-to-reach Packard itch, your barge may just have come in (so to speak).

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I know what you’re thinking: “What is a magazine publisher doing certifying pre-owned vehicles?” The answer: selling a lot of cars. Motor Trend’s Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) program, which certifies vehicles and dealers and offers some service features, sold more vehicles last year than Kia or Porsche’s in-house CPO programs, at 10,010 units sold. Which raises questions about both the nature of consumer demands and the efficacy of some of these OEM CPO programs. For one thing, it’s not at all clear why consumers seek out a new car magazine’s stamp of approval on a used car. After all, would you rather have your car certified by its manufacturer or by the magazine that picked the ’97 Malibu and 2002 Thunderbird as its Car Of The Year? Not that Motor Trend has anything to do with its eponymous CPO program, mind you, as that is operated by EasyCare. And that firm has some 2.6m current service contracts, a number that puts MT’s 10k units into perspective. But the real question here is how do CPO sales by brands like Porsche, Kia and Jaguar get beat by a magazine? Given that EasyCare also administers the official Volvo, Mazda, and Jaguar CPO programs, isn’t it a bit odd that the Motor Trend-branded program sells nearly as many cars (or, in the case of Jaguar, more)?

My memories of ‘charity cars’ are not fond ones. Back in the late 1990’s the dirtiest public auction in metro-Atlanta would line up about 50 of these vehicles for the beginning of their sale. The acrid smell of blown head gaskets and leaking oils of every type would soon emanate the auction as most of these vehicles were pushed past the block. Back then you could buy a non-running car for about $20, and a running one for no more than $250. The high bidders were usually dealers, who would then bring back the same vehicles the following week and try to sell them for huge markup’s.
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I realize this video is hardly brand new, but it’s one of the more jarringly tragic car videos I’ve seen since Cash for Clunkers ended. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust… classic 2002 to its of scrap. Every time I see a video like this, I remember why photos of non-restored classics on the street or in the junkyard are so cool: these cars won’t be around forever.

According to TrueCar’s newly-launched Clearbook site, I did… a little. If you want to make sure you don’t overpay for your next car, you should consider making Clearbook one of the stops on your pre-purchase web-research tour. The site analyzes over 3.6m nation-wide listings and shows, by model and location, what the car you’re looking for sells for on average… a valuable tool, provided you already know what car you’re looking for. If you don’t know what you want the next addition to your garage to be, TTAC recommends you contact our own car-buying gurus Sajeev Mehta and Steve Lang, who lend their expertise to our readers every Tuesday and Thursday in their advice column “New or Used?” Whatever you do, do not just crack open a beer and start surfing Craigslist… you will definitely regret it. Remember, information is power!

Why did someone from Atlanta keep this? An all-wheel-drive SUV is not exactly the best choice for Atlanta’s hot climates and long commutes. You get abysmal fuel economy. A mediocre safety record. Higher repair costs due to the all-wheel-drive system. Did I mention the solarium effect out here that takes dashboards and discolors and deforms them? When I bought this for $1000, I was seemingly going against the conventional wisdom. But I wasn’t… here’s why…

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20 years. Most marriages and capital offenses don’t have that level of commitment. To think of how long that is for any daily driver, consider what was not in most cars back then. Airbags, anti-lock brakes, cd players… heck ‘premium sound’ usually landed you nothing more than a cassette deck and four speakers. Now consider that this one owner 1990 Buick Century has a design dating all the way back to 1982. We’re talking about a period of design where the world’s most popular entertainment consisted of Pac-man & Atari 2600’s. Ancient times. Good times. But bad times for Detroit. Very, very bad times.

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It’s a rough world out there: First new cars and especially SUVs were pretty much unsalable. A few months ago, the recession drove used car prices sky-high. Then truck sales were back with a vengeance. Now that you finally have a new shiny SUV in the driveway (yeah!) you wake up and it has lost a huge chunk of its value, overnight. Says USA Today today: “The run-up in gas prices past $3 a gallon has been running down the value of used SUVs, causing prices to plummet below levels listed in well-known buying guides.” Read More >

Manheim Consulting’s Used Vehicle Value Index shows that used cars have more than recovered from their all-time low of just two years ago, and have hit their strongest levels since 1995. This isn’t wildly surprising, given that weak new car sales over the last two years have boosted demand for less expensive used options. What’s intriguing about the strong growth is that a recovering new-car market doesn’t seem to have dented pre-owned values much in the short term. Manheim’s report notes:

Because the new and used vehicle markets are both monthly payment driven, the important ratio is not transaction prices, but loan-to-value ratios, credit-adjusted APRs, loan maturities, and the resulting monthly payment. Given that new vehicle incentive activity has remained restrained and the model-year changeover was smooth, the monthly payment ratio between the two markets is not as far out-of-line as it has been at some points in the past.

Additionally, although there is waterfall effect that means new vehicle pricing eventually impacts all segments of the used vehicle market, the most effective transmission is through late-model used vehicles, especially those that represent a real substitute to a new vehicle purchase. With the reduction in off-rental units, late-model trade-ins, and early cycle repossessions, nearly-new used vehicles are in short supply. The average mileage on vehicles sold at auction has risen in every market segment over the past two years. And, with significant redesigns and new options, manufacturers have been able to make many models less susceptible to substitution pressure from the nearly-new market.

The significance of this trend: after two years of credit crunch-weakened sales, fleet buyers binged like crazy during 2010, largely fueling the new-car sales turnaround, especially in the early part of the year.  Leasing is back in a big way as well: having fallen to just 9 percent of new car transactions two years ago, they’re back up to 25 percent. As these purchases (not to mention subprime repossessions) work their way back onto the used market, the supply of lower-mileage used cars could well increase, depressing the value of the entire used-car market.

Certain things keep me up at night.

Stock market? Nope.

Business issues? Every once in a blue moon.

Family? Not unless the little ones begin drinking my coffee.

Weird questions that no one in their right mind should ever ponder? Bingo!

Car maintenance seems to be an inescapable recurring thought these days. So I may as well take the dive here.

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What is white, powerful, a ton of fun, and comes with a ‘retractable’ top? If you said the author well, you’re mostly wrong. My top happens to be aerodynamic and I only have powerful eyeglasses. But when it comes to cars we’re talking about convertibles in the wintertime. This week there are a massive amount of convertible trade-in’s at the auctions. A lot of folks here in Atlanta want to forgo the delayed gratification of a spring day for a winter shopping spree. Black Friday shopping sometimes requires divestments and some folks have decided that the least favorite toy must be exchanged for the most recent shopping season. Is this the right decision? Well, it depends on how you measure value.

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It’s 1992 and Pontiac is the division of driving excitement. A power hungry driver with leather gloves and an intense maniacal stare takes on the ‘call of the road’ in between TV football games. His beautiful black Bonneville, 200+ horsepower, screeches from a stand still and thrusts right to the edge of the posted speed limit… and not a single mph more. No Cadillac zags through double yellow lines. No country clubber saying, “You bet your Ascot!” This is GM in the heart of the Stempel era. Another frigging rental car marketed as sporty.

Fast forward 18 years later and I have the 1996 version of the exact same car. 3800 V6. 102,000 original miles. I bought it for $1500 and threw in a new water pump and tune-up. Overall I have about $1800 in this plasticized, full-sized Pontiac. Not a bad amount given the mileage and the good paint. The question now is what to do?
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What makes a vehicle valuable? Most folks chose to invest in the myth. A given brand a ‘Supername’ alone can save them from a Kryptonite’s worth of expenses and maintenance issues. I work backwards. The name alone doesn’t tell me very much. The owners do. When I find an owner who has been a good steward of their vehicle, I take the plunge regardless of the name involved. Does this always work?

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As a newcomer to Denver, I had my worries that the junkyards here would be wall-to-wall Sables and Sephias. Would my junkyard trips be a slog through a miasma of late-model boredom? As J. Frank Parnell said about the hazards of lobotomies: Not at all! Read More >