My Dad generally had no trouble selling cars on the relatively few occasions he put a car up for sale. They were always extremely well cared for and running like new (or better, twas the time of carburetors) when they went home with some lucky buyer, and I don’t think any of the cars took longer than a week to sell, even in the pre-internet days of classified ads and The Yankee Swapper (shout-out to my New England geezers).
There was one car, however, that just wouldn’t go away: a 1976 AMC Pacer, two-tone red over white, though I may be wrong about the year. Dad aquired one as the latest family mover sometime in 1980 or so, as I recall, and my sister and I considered it to be quite the weird novelty. The Pacer was already kind of a joke by then, but we grudgingly agreed it was a nice car to be in, and man, you could really see out of it well.
Unfortunately, it just never ran right, at least not right enough for my Dad. It would occasionally hesitate (if not fully fall on its face) when asked to accelerate more than gently, and Dad just couldn’t get it sorted – and this was a guy who rebuilt an entire MG Midget in the garage and got it to run as reliably as our Toyota Corolla. After a new carburetor and many other solution-chases, he threw in the towel and put the Pacer up for sale. It didn’t budge for a good month, an eternity by Dad standards, even at the low price he was asking. It didn’t help that Dad was honest to a fault, and let any prospects know the car had an issue, but I’m sure the price reflected that. One day, it was finally gone, to whom I don’t know. A week later, Dad came home with an A60 Celica. Now that was a car.
Stephen Walter Gossin, seller of 150+ used cars that he’s resurrected, has a tale of his own about a hard-to-sell machine. If a quick sale earns an “A,” this one is very aptly graded Z:
That 350Z (auto, convertible) that I sold about 2 months ago took almost 7 months for someone to purchase it. This seemingly aligns with the troubles that Nissan is having moving the new Z as well (only ~100avg sold per US State; 5K total units in 2025). I replaced the transmission, recovered the seats, took it to a paint shop and fixed dents and 20yr old paint issues, put a new top on it, did the valve covers, a new starter, new key fobs and still very much struggled to sell it for under book value. 2-seat cars have a very small buying audience.
Your turn: What Car Could You Just Not Get Rid Of?
Top graphic image: stock.adobe.com
It was time to move on from the ’85 944. It was the classified ad and leave a message era. Got a dozen messages a day from teenage boyz asking how fast, if it was a chick magnet, and when they could test drive it.
Let the ad lapse, try again in a month with different wording, same result. Repeat several times. Finally a guy called, said he and his son would like to look the car over. He showed up in a 968, 16 year old in tow. Yeah, we worked out a deal.
It took me 10 years to sell my ’91 Eagle Talon TSi AWD but that’s because I couldn’t bring myself to give it up even though it was just sitting in the garage with a blown ECU. I still miss that car.
None. I hold onto cars and don’t sell them often, so when I do sell one I’m highly motivated to sell it and try to price it accordingly, or list it where it will have the best chance of selling.
The last car I sold was my Mazdaspeed 3 which I put up for auction on CarsAndBids back in 2023. That guaranteed a buyer, although I had to let the market decide the sale price. Thankfully the auction ended about at the price I wanted to sell the car, but without dealing with any annoying tire kickers.
94 Honda Accord. First car purchased after getting married. Has 210k on odometer. was stolen once (resulting in blown head gasket). Was driven by kids through high school and college. Now only gets driven when kids or other family/friends come into town. Really needs to be a daily driver…has at least another 200k in her…CA Bay Area…so no rust anywhere (just a nice sunlight patina).
Every time I get ready to sell…another reason to keep it pops up.
Have collected repair parts for it which are stored in the trunk (headlights, CV boots, steering arm boots, brake rotors, oil filters, PCV valve…) Install these whenever I have a few spare hours…which are few and far between.
If anyone wants a well loved 94 Accord EX 4 door that work…DM me…before more folks come to visit…otherwiise…it ain’t going anywhere anytime soon.
My (now ex) wife’s previous husband passed away and the Mini Cooper she had bought for him a few years prior to their divorce was surprisingly hard to get rid of. This was in SE Texas. There was no dealership in town and none of the more reputable used car dealerships would bite. I ended up taking it to the Mini dealership in Houston and took what they offered and gave the money to his mother. Because she needed it more than we did at the time. And it wasn’t that much.
Driving it occasionally up until then, I thought it was an awful car. About a week before taking it to Houston, I discovered he had pumped the tires up to around 55 psi. Supposedly to sharpen its handling. It might have done that, but it also made the ride on imperfect pavement absolutely abusive. Once lowered to 35 psi, it wasn’t AS bad. But I still had no interest in keeping it.
Personally, I gave my brother my first car. A Datsun 510 station wagon. After I bought a used Peugeot 504. He wrecked it within a year. I passed down a ’65 Olds 98 Luxury Sedan and an early-80’s something Toronado my grandfather left to me. He wrecked those too. He wrecked a couple of vehicles he bought on his own after that. He has settled down now and has a couple of ten-year-old + Toyotas.
Everything else I’ve owned and sold went pretty quickly; under two weeks. Don’t ask stupid money and they will go. I do miss the Peugeot, but it got totaled in a rear-ender.
IMHO, it’s okay to leave a few dollars on the table if it helps take away something you no longer want. Perhaps that’s easy to say for someone who is retired and put enough away to live comfortably for as long as I expect to.
My w126. I accepted a lowball offer for it to go this weekend, cause I’ve fully entered the “ick” stage. I’m ready to move on enough to eat a large loss vs. what I’ve invested.
So sorry to hear this. They certainly had a “presence.”
It made sense at the time, and it was highly therapeutic to work on when I was off work going through chemo. But now it’s just a memory of a time I’d like to put behind me.
It’s a great car, and the new owner is beyond stoked to pick it up. It’ll continue to make new memories with someone else.
The next stop for any car I’ve owned has been the junkyard or selling/trading with a friend. I can only imagine the nonsense you have to put up with selling an old cheap junker… I did sell 2 motorcycles and that was pretty quick and painless.
I sold my ’74 Vega for $250 to a woman who insisted on buying it even after me telling her it wasnt a good purchase for her. She brought it back the next day with a new oil leak – the valve cover gasket let go. I told her if she bought the part I would install it. She made several appointments and no showed to each one and I was done.
She threatened me with a lawsuit several times and then went silent. About a month later I came home to it sitting in my driveway with the keys, the untransferred title and a seized motor.
A couple months later, I eventually sold it for $200 to a guy for a V8 swap.
I had an e46 that took me about 3 months to get rid of. I helped my dad sell a diesel rabbit and that took 6 or 7 months. Luckly that was before the people would contact you trying to buy parts off of whole cars.
I can’t say I have ever had any trouble getting rid of a car. When I am done, I am done, and I price them to just go away. Though I usually have a line of friends and club folks waiting for my cars when I am done with them. But for sure the couple that just needed to GO I firesale priced them so it wasn’t a problem.
I thought I might have trouble selling my Mercedes wagon (it’s in that uncanny valley of aging but still being worth real money), but out of the blue a friend asked if I want to, as his brother is looking for one. So that seems to probably be sold. We’ll see about my Land Rover Disco – getting rid of that is a next summer project. I’ll probably just price it to move, and it is a really, really good one with the very rare in the US 5spd manual.
What are you replacing all this exotica with? Did the Mercedes have a five-cylinder diesel? I always loved the way those sounded at idle.
People keep hitting, scraping denting my ’17 Accord V6. I imagine it won’t be worth a lot when I decide to get something else, but it’s a relatively fun and efficient (on the freeway) sedan to drive. I have no idea what’s next.
Nothing, at least in the short term, just downsizing. Once my new house is done and I have a real garage in FL, I will bring my BMW wagon down from Maine. The Rover is just surplus to requirements up there – I have driven it maybe 400 miles in the past three years. I don’t tow a boat anymore, and I am never there in the winter anymore.
The Mercedes is a ’14 E350 wagon. I have had a ’79 w123 300TD with the non-turbo diesel 5 though, and also an ’88 w124 300TE wagon. I just don’t really need TWO wagons, and I usually end up driving to Maine anyway.
I loved the looks of the W123s. And the W124s. I think they lost their way after that.
What part of FL? Personally, I like the Tampa/St. Pete side. And I could see living in St. Augustine or Jacksonville, but never Miami or Orlando. But that’s just me.
I’m about two hours south of Tampa in Port Charlotte. Midway between Ft. Myers and Sarasota. I agree, this side is the best side. That far north it still gets cold, LOL, but Miami is insane. The Gulf Coast is a LOT more laid back. Most of the residents are on death’s door, after all. They don’t call it God’s Waiting Room for nothing. 🙂
In an ideal world I would have either an absolutely mint condition example of either a w123 280TE or another w124 300TE. Hard to come by though. There is a Mercedes specialist on YouTube that just got in an absolutely spectacular super low-miles absolutely mint late w123 300TD, but they are going to be asking the best part of $100K for it. <gulp> I’d rather have the twincam 280TE gasser, but they never officially sold them in the US so that’s a project to get one. A few private imports out there.
Back in the late 60s, before I could legally drive, I wanted a 300 SEL 6.3 so bad. I’ve never owned a M-B. I’ve had a couple of BMWs and a VW. I don’t think any modern M-B tickles me at all.
I don’t drive hard anymore and a reliable appliance of a car is fine. I have a paid off ’17 Accord V6 and I don’t need a car that big anymore. It gets more than 35 mpg on the 700+ mile trip to visit my mother, but otherwise, I’d prefer something better than the 20 mpg around town and easier to park. I have two inches on either side of my mirrors pulling into my condo’s garage.
I have no interest in any MB newer than what I have (and kind of wish I had bought an older one when I bought this one, or a third BMW). Along with the rest of the industry, shark well and truly jumped with the following generation of them, and the current one is worse yet (not saying they are bad cars, just not to my taste). I’ve also never had much interest in high performance nonsense. I am perfectly happy with the 230ish hp of my pair of BMWs, the 302hp of the Mercedes is overkill, but it was the smallest engine they offered in them in the US in the wagon of that generation.
I find the added refinements of a MB or BMW over an Accord etc. to be worth the money. Hondas feel like loud tin boxes to me, have had plenty of Accords as rentals. Camrys are dull as dishwater to drive. They do make a lovely V6, but it is a tad thirsty (Toyota does too). But I don’t like their torqueless wonder 4s very much. Toyota hybrids are absolutely brilliant in terms of ownership, but again, not much fun to drive.
I’m actually a big fan of the ubiquitous 2.0L(ish) turbo 4 that the industry loves these days (that Saab pioneered). Power when you need it, economy when you don’t need the power. Closest thing to a free lunch there is in automotive engineering when done and driven correctly. Though that said, BMW’s last n/a inline 6 as in my two cars is pretty magical. Smooth, efficient enough, and makes a lovely noise. Shame we never got the full-fat direct-injection version of it in the States.
One reason for you to go German – optional power folding mirrors. I have them on my BMW wagon, excellent for those tight parking situations. There were some parking garages in Europe where it was fold the mirrors or don’t park there at all.
Hondas from back then were all loud. Our 2nd Gen CR-V was really bad. My ’17 Accord is not as quiet as I’d like, but it’s not horrible. They’ve gotten quieter based on some recent Uber/Lyft rides. Maybe my next car is a Lexus hybrid of some sort.
I had an ’88 Saab 9000T and it wasn’t particularly efficient even on the freeway. Maybe upper 20s at best. It also was not particularly quiet either. But it was gorgeous! My NA Accord V6 would spank it in a drag race and gets 35-40 mpg on freeways, depending on speed and prevailing winds. At 70, it seems pretty sensitive to whether I have a tail wind, no wind, or a head wind.
But the Accord is thirsty around town. ~19-20 MPG. The Saab was as well. Between the two, I had an ’01 VW Jetta TDI and the worse MPG I got was 38 during the cold months after 9/11 when I was largely ferrying my kid to and from school. Never getting fully up to temp.
On the trips I make to visit family in N Cal from Tacoma, I’d get ~50 mpg, but diesel is more expensive than the regular gas my Accord is happy to run on. So, fuel costs are pretty much a wash. But maintenance costs are much lower with the Honda, and it’s nice to have ridiculous power on tap available when (rarely) needed. I do miss the Jetta’s 5M transmission, but the Honda’s automatic does a decent job, although I think it upshifts earlier than I wish. On cruise control it will downshift two gears to keep my speed close to the set speed on 6% down grades. Which is kind of cool. But sure, a hybrid will recharge its battery in such a situation. On the other hand, the Honda was bought with cash and only has 73K miles on it, so there’s not much point in me selling or trading it in at this point.
You had a 9000 when they were still both short-geared and had much less sophisticated engine management. The late ones would do well over 30 highway even at warp speed – which was astounding for a car of that performance in the day. More modern is better still, my ’08 9-3 SportCombi was just as fast as my BMW while being a good 10% more efficient across the board – and that was without direct-injection which is an absolute game-changer for both power and efficiency.
My first new car was an ’02 Golf TDI. Brilliant car – just enough power with astounding economy while avoiding the ills that plague modern diesels. Wish I still had that one.
I do miss my A4 Jetta TDI 5M, but it really needed a sixth gear for my time in Texas. The Accord is relaxed at 80 +. The Jetta would do it but didn’t seem particularly happy. The suspension etc was fine, but the engine wasn’t happy. But around town, it was torquey enough and very pleasant to drive.
Agreed – they should have had a 6spd, but that didn’t come for another generation or two. But in the northeast, where 75mph was hauling ass and risking your license back then, they were just fine.
80 was just the starting point in Texas. Heck, there’s a toll road between San Antonio and Austin where the speed limit is 85.
Lol – I know, I have driven on it. But that isn’t New England.
I actually haven’t. I avoid toll roads like the plague. Too much Scottish blood or something. And fuel economy really starts to plummet at those kinds of speed.
My kid took his mother and her now not so new hubby from San Antonio to Austin on that road in my car oh five years ago the summer he stayed with us and he said the speed “weirded” him out.
The thing I have found, even on the 75 mph FM roads is that after a while at those speeds, when you get to a town, it’s really hard to do, say 35.
The joys of an expense account. 🙂 Though the first time was when I picked up my new-to-me Range Rover in San Antonio, just for the novelty of being able to run 85mph legally. It’s only money.
Of course, compared to the Autobahn it’s still the slow lane. After you’ve been running 140-155mph for a while, 100mph feels like you can just get out and walk faster.
My first trip to Texas was to Commerce out in East Texas nearly 30 years ago. I was installing a system in two stores about 10-15 miles apart. When I had to go to the second store for the first time, the owner warned me not to speed through the town in-between as it was a notorious speed trap. I could not believe that those windy/hilly back country roads were posted at 70, and when I got to that town it went down to 55! A road like that would have been 50/35 or even 25 in Maine. In whatever craptastic rental I had (probably a Grand Am or an Achieva), I wasn’t all that comfortable doing 70 on that road.
Texas is kinda crazy in good ways. 🙂
I got to go on unregulated stretches of the Autostrade in Italy back in 1988, however I was in a diesel Fiat Ducato van which was pretty much done at 80 mph/130 kph.
And Texas can be kinda crazy in bad ways. Personally, I’m happy to no longer be living there.
I didn’t love my M235i once it was landed in the US, but damn that thing was fun in Europe. It was still accelerating decently hard when it hit the limiter at 155, and it did those speed effortlessly. Italy was fun too – especially in the mountains. Leaving Genoa on the Autostrada I got in a little bit of a tussle with a Toyobaru. He lost. 🙂 We managed nine countries in the month my Mother and me were over there in the car.
The previous time, my wagon was delightfully composed at it’s 130mph top speed. No sport package, so the lower limit. Back in 2011, between Stuttgart and Berlin:
https://flic.kr/p/dSNzvp
Very cool! My only time in Germany was at the airport in Frankfurt, on the way to Moscow.
A decade or so earlier, while in college, I had a GF from Bremen, and I let her do a stint behind the wheel of my Datsun 510 station wagon and she was doing 85+ on Highway 101 in central California. Back during the 55-mph era. She probably could have talked her way out of a ticket. She was quite pretty and charming.
She went on to be a flight attendant for Lufthansa and then married and had four kids. But she was a lot of fun to be with.
She was about 5’11” and there was a time we were out in San Diego, where I was in college at UCSD, and she was staying with a woman who had done an exchange program with her mom’s family. Two of her friends flew in for a couple of weeks. We all went out to a place that let me in. I was underage at the time. She went to use the bathroom and there was a guy, about 5’8″ waiting for her to come out. He said something and she lifted him up and held him against the wall for about 10 seconds. When she got back to our table, we asked what that was all about and she told us he said, “do you like sex?” And she replied “yes, but not with you.” And slowly let him get back down onto his own feet. You’ve got to love the directness of the Germans.
The next day, we headed north and she set the land speed record for that car. Wow, dusting off some old brain cells. We had to stop every two hours for them to get coffee and pee. I was a more drive until you can’t kind of guy back then.
LOL – that’s a great story! I had a nearly 7′ tall German boyfriend in college. He was a basketball player, and also quick behind the wheel, yet a supremely composed driver in the way that Germans usually are.
For tall female Germans, my Hungarian basketball player best friend dated a Swiss-German volleyball player for a short time – she had to be 6’4 or so. And an absolute knockout. She visited us over Christmas break that year (he always stayed with my family over the holidays, couldn’t afford to fly home). I don’t think he ever actually managed to get in her pants though he sure tried. They met at the Jr Olympics the previous summer. Sweet girl.
My Hungarian friend (who is now a US citizen and lives in my hometown with his Hungarian wife and two kids – didn’t see THAT coming in 1989) was, and continues to be a complete and utter lunatic behind the wheel to the point where I refuse to let him drive with me in a car anymore – I don’t know how he even still has a license. But that is also VERY Hungarian. They make Italian drivers seem calm. In college between us we used to make the 212 mile drive from school to my house in rather less than 3hrs. ~100 miles of back roads which I would drive, the rest interstate that he would at triple digit speeds in my ’84 Jetta GLI.
Memories!
Dunedin here. Love it.
That seems like a nice area. I’ve really only been up there a couple times though.
It was between here and the Apollo Beach area when I moved down, I have friends in both. But Port Charlotte was a LOT cheaper. I bought lovely little place for $90K in 2017. Those were the days, sigh.
Yes, Dunedin is very nice as are some other towns in North Pinellas. Florida gets a lot of flack, but there are a host of great little towns.
I had a 2000 Suburban as the family truckster for a number of years, and my kids wrecked the interior so badly that nobody would buy it when I put it up for sale. I ended up getting like $350 for it, just a few dollars more than I could have sold it for scrap. Mechanically it was in good shape.
When I was single, I sold almost every car for more than I paid for it because I’d fixed it up. Not anymore.
I generally sold the cars I bought used for about what I paid for them. I lost a sweet ’86 Accord in a divorce. The ’89 Toyota pickup truck I bought new sold for about $5,000 less than I paid for it, but that was after five years and 60K miles, so I don’t feel too bad about that. I sold my ’01 Jetta TDI with 165K miles 16 years later for $1,800 to a friend who bought it for his brother. I liked that car a lot, but the ’17 Accord V6 I bought to replace it is a much nicer (and safer) car.
BMW 335i. It needed some work that I was too sick of the thing to be bothered with, so I priced it at half the price of any other 335i for sale locally, with all known issues fully disclosed. Crickets from Craiglist. A barrage of jokers offering a third of my asking price on Facebook with no prior conversation.
I finally got someone who was genuinely interested…and the damn car broke again before I could seal the deal. I ended up donating it to public radio.
Lol, BMW. My 540i has so many problems there’s no way I could sell it. I parked at the bus station this morning with steam coming from under the hood. AGAIN.
Anything my E39 needs, it will get. That thing’s a dream to work on in comparison. The E90 engine bay with that big six made absolutely every job a nightmare. I’m sticking with a six in the 5er, though; I had a 540iT a number of years ago, and while accessibility for service isn’t much worse with the V8, it just needs so much more of it.
The trick is to stick to the N51/52 and forego the nonsense that is the N54/55. Tight access for service doesn’t matter much when the car almost never needs any. 15 years with my 328! and the only things touched in the engine bay have been for recalls and my preemptively replacing the serp belt tensioner when I replaced the belt. My 128i has needed a radiator hose replaced (I broke it – doh) and it had two of the three common oil leaks before I bought it. I did the OFHG myself preemptively when I bought it. The wagon stubbornly refuses to leak, LOL. Best car BMW ever made, hence why they badged it “328!”, I guess.
It came like this from the factory, I have pictures from delivery at BMW Welt that show the badge:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51405780614_b5ba930dbf_n.jpg
Normally, when I sell a car, it goes within a couple of days. I normally try to take good pictures, explain/show all of the defects, and send them a complete service history. Even for my salvage title cars, they normally move in a couple of days.
The car that got the least amount of interest, ironically, is the car I miss the most: 2008 Volvo C30 T5 6MT. The car was epic. Full bolt ons, tuned, and was stock-looking. Total sleeper. Was relatively trouble free, quick, comfortable, and got 24mpg almost religiously. I needed a bigger car (baby #1 was on the way) and the Volvo had to go.
You know who is looking for a quirky, rare, Swedish hot hatch in Phoenix, AZ? No one. Eventually, when I tagged it’s competitors (GTI, Mini) in the ad, a nice dude called Dan came and bought it. After a test drive, he gave me almost asking and to a good home it went.
For such an amazing car, it was jarring that so few people reached out about it.
Is this still available?
My truck. A 2006 GMC Sierra crew cab base model, complete with 2wd and the small 4.8 liter V8. I purchased it during the last week of my first teaching job, with no intention of keeping it long term. It was a cheap way out of a previous bad decision. (remember when trucks were cheap? Pepperidge Farm remembers)
Next thing I know, I’ve had it for 20 years. It’s been with me through so many major life changes, and it’s never let me down. It has been dead reliable and impossibly cheap to maintain. I fully intend to drive it to my last day of school in another 15ish years. Will it be a daily driver that entire time? Probably not, but even at 20 years old it is my most reliable vehicle and primary family hauler.
The biggest bonus of the 4.8 is no collapsible lifter issues!
YEP!
At some point, the frame will break in half. I’ve taken good care of the truck, but I do live in the heart of the rust belt. Eventually entropy will win.
I’ll be sure and pluck that 4.8 and put it into something else. Possibly my ’74 Buick Apollo.
I remember how depressing it was to learn about the concept of entropy in junior high school. I felt hopeless! While I do see examples of it in real life, I’ve managed, personally, to avoid brutal outbreaks. Other than my body.
Oh, the body entropy is the worst!
I’m not rusting, but my lower spine is a mess. At some point, I may break in half.
It’s the hips and knees for me.
Oh, and I apparently slept wrong last night, because I have a crick in my neck this morning.
I have a spinal stenosis and the soles of my feet are essentially numb. Which really messes with one’s balance. And now I have to be very careful about which pedal I’m pushing. And how hard!
Oh wow, that is not fun!
Your brain adapts. As long as I can see, I’m fine on my feet. But at night, I don’t walk without a flashlight of some sort. An iPhone’s LED is plenty for me to see what I’m doing. And at least nothing hurts! Yet.
I had a 99.5 VW Golf TDI that (in a surprise to no one) was nothing but trouble – tried to trade it in after maybe 3 years at several dealers for something more reliable and had several outright refuse to make any deal. One full blown yelled at me that they didn’t want to be stuck with one more of those things and would not accept it as a trade no matter how little I might take for it. Finally managed to get a local Nissan/Mercedes dealer (helluva combo) to take it in exchange for a used Corolla, but for a minute or two I thought I was going to be stuck with it forever.
I’ve had a few that have hung on longer than I’d like over the years, but the one that I’ll always remember as being near impossible to get rid of was a robin’s egg blue 1969 Mercedes 230 with a 4-on-the-tree. I only gave $1500 for it, and it was a sharp little car. However, much like your dad and his Pacer, I could never get it to run right. Granted, I didn’t try all that hard as I had a bunch of other things going on, but attempting to tune the twin-Zeniths proved to an exercise in futility, even with the correct air-meter tool. They most likely needed to be rebuilt, and I was toying with the idea of swapping in a couple Webers, but ultimately decided I’d rather have my money back.
Nope, listed it on Craigslist for the same $1500 I paid for it along with its various issues detailed in full. I received call after call after call about that car. People wanted to see it, but would never show. They’d talk my ear off about it – how great it looked in the pics, etc., but then start asking a bunch of questions indicating they didn’t get past the price in the description. It gets old answering every question with “as I mentioned in the ad…”.
After awhile I added “or trade for something interesting”. Yeah, no. Bad idea as this tripled the volume of calls and emails. So many offers of cars I’d have to tow back to my place, a few “2nd amendment items”, an offer to paint all the interior rooms in my house, etc. I finally did respond positively to a guy who offered a really nice large rolling tool box – he even sent pics. Never heard back.
Finally, I was selling another car and someone looking at that noticed the blue Mercedes. By then I had about given up and let whatever adds I had up expire. He had mentioned that he was a roofer by trade and we negotiated a deal where I’d pay for the shingles at his contractor cost and he’d provide all the labor to re-roof my 40×14 chicken coupe shed with its steeply pitched roof in exchange for the Benz. Finally, something that seemed to work out!
Nope again – he did get all of the supplies, provided receipts, and loaded up everything nicely into the shed. Then I couldn’t get ahold of him again for six months. He told me he lost his phone when his fishing boat sunk and didn’t have the money for another. After that he sheepishly mentioned… “Uh, I don’t think I can do that roof – sorry.”
Cut to almost another year later. I’m selling a shitbox Oldsmobile my wife had hit a deer with. The $350 asking price pulled a truly discerning gentleman out of the woodwork who needed a reliable daily for his lady friend. He also noticed the old blue Benz as well and when I told him the story of the roofer gone rogue he mentioned that he too was a roofer.
Welp, he disappeared without a trace, but showed up three months later asking if I’d still be interested in trading the re-roof job for the Benz. “Sure, why not?” I said. And what do you know, he was there the next day tearing off the three old layers of shingles, and had everything buttoned up a couple of days later. He even cleaned up all of the old nails and shingles from around the place. We got the ’69 Merc started up and he cruised away with a freshly signed title just as happy as can be.
I found out later through a landlord friend of mine that the dude was an on-again off-again heroin addict, but no matter – he sure did a hell of a nice job on that roof!
Good to hear the story, eventually, had a happy ending! But wow… that was an adventure! And a four on the tree. I didn’t know Mercedes did that. My neighbor’s ’68 W115 220D had a four on the floor. Shifted pretty nicely as I recall.
Thanks! The 4-on-the-tree was cool, but the one I had was starting to get a bit sloppy. I had to be careful at stoplights. I almost took off in reverse a couple of times as it was right next to first. Got in the habit of bumping the clutch a little while waiting at stops. That combined with the heel/toe work I usually had to do because of the messed up carbs made it a bit of a handful around town.
Those W115 220Ds are great as well. At some point after buying that 230 I picked up a ’72 220D. I really liked it, but the automatic added slowness to an already leisurely climb to 60mph. Eventually the flex plate in the transmission broke in that one and I decided to move on. Had a much easier time selling it – the 1st guy that took a look gave me what I was asking/what I originally paid for it.
Nice! That’s always a decent outcome.
Too poor to keep what I should not keep. I have my jeep and will keep it too long. I remember in my 20 I was bummed when the junk I had to sell had a full gas tank.
When I’m done with a car, I’m done with it. There’s no such thing as a car that won’t sell; the seller is just asking too much for it. I’ll just lower the price weekly until the car finds a buyer.
My Firebird I couldn’t get rid of with all the time and work that has gone into it and working on it with my dad which I have mentioned on here before it helped bring my dad back in my life. Besides that I could move on from any of my other vehicles I think pretty easily. If I get my dad’s 57 Bel Air in the future I don’t think I could get rid of that either as he has had that for over 25 years now since I was like 7 or 8 and there a ton of memories with that car.
My ’58 Citroen 2CV took a couple years to sell. I finally ended up getting a price I could live with, but there just weren’t that many people who thought that a 12 hp tin can was a great idea.
At first, I thought you meant hard to get rid of because you loved the car. That was the story of my 69 Goat, but I had nowhere to put it.
I inherited a 78 Buick Century that somehow managed to be both tail-happy and underpowered – a true triumph of malaise engineering. It was ugly as sin too, thankfully I inherited it so I just lowered the price until it sold.
I had the same thought of what this article was going to be about. Maybe a topic for another article.
I had a ’74 Toyota Tercel 4×4 wagon that was also surprisingly tail happy at times. On dry pavement. Also, great in the rare snow events in the Puget Sound. I never got stuck. Likewise, a 2001 Honda CR-V. Unstoppable. But without the trailing throttle tail-happiness.
Oddly, with the Buick it was under acceleration that the thing would step out. Very odd, considering the paltriness of the acceleration. Made accelerating up on ramps a pain.
I’m sure if I had been brave enough to plant my foot in my parents’ 65 Olds 88 around a corner it would have been a bit tail-happy, but I was so risk adverse that I never tried to do anything more that 0-60 runs in it.
I had a friend in HS whose dad had a couple of Cortinas we got to autocross in. And I knew the difference between a Cortina and a big, heavy GM sedan. My first car was a Datsun 510 station wagon that understeered horribly when pushed to its limits.
I used to make my Peugeot 504’s tires squeal frequently before I realized I was mortal. I settled down and I don’t think I’ve made a tire squeal since. Other than seeing what my Honda V6 Accord could do from a standstill. It definitely would spin the front tires. When I get to the end of this set of tires, I do want to go to a track day to see what its cornering limits are, because I don’t want to explore them on public roads. On windy roads, I get passed by F-150s, so I suspect there’s a fair amount more there than I expect. And I I suppose I should find that limit. When I have to avoided a situation, it’s never disappointed. You do what you feel like you have to and hope for the best.
My first real reliable car was a 1990 Mustang GT, got it in the mid 1990s with about 40,000 miles on it. I had a good time with that car although I got it into various misadventures that were mostly entirely my fault. I sold it to my dad with 150,000 miles on it but I always sorta missed it. 10+ years later I wound up buying an almost identical 1991 Mustang GT and really enjoyed it, but it was too nice. It had never even been driven in the rain. After 5-6 years I realized it was just sitting in the garage and sold it for the same price I bought it for, just so I could have one less declining responsibility sitting around.
The Maserati Boomerang.
Bittersweetly wondering about Adrian’s contribution to this post…
After I got my first decent job after graduating college I traded my 1993 Miata (big mistake, which I corrected last year when I bought an identical Miata) for a 1991 Corvette. It was a pretty interesting C4 – In ’91 the Corvette got a bit of a facelift so every one of them had the ZR1 look. It had the L98 engine and it had a 6-speed manual, which was a great combination. In hindsight I’m a huge fan of the L98 – it was a way better than the LT-1 I had in my Trans Am in so many ways. It was also unique since it was that obnoxious teal color and had cloth seats.
Notice I said unique… not rare. Every Corvette is rare when you narrow it down by factory equipment. I learned that the Corvette tax was a real thing. Parts that cost $25 on a Camaro suddenly cost $225 on Corvette and mechanics suddenly don’t know how to work on them (or release the weird parking brake – another story for another time).
Anyway, I had to sell the Corvette because I got married and had a couple of kids so it didn’t make sense as a daily anymore. (Yeah, David – we all go through this)
Except it would NOT SELL. Here’s a list of things it had going against it:
I ended up trading it back to the place I got it from. He took it in trade as a favor and gave me back some cash and a pickup that I could sell more easily – another dumb plan that actually worked.