The $500 Used Car You Bought Blew Up? - The Podcast

"SteveLehto" (stevelehto) 12/15/2016 at 09:00 • Filed to: None

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Raise your hand if you have ever bought a car for $500 or less. Yes, it is an American pastime, buying used cars for what amounts to little more than scrap value. Did the car work out for you? If not, did you call an attorney to complain?

I get a surprising number of phone calls at my office from disgruntled buyers of used cars that were bought at ridiculously cheap prices. And simply because the buyers are human, they believe they have been aggrieved - even though the car which just blew up in their driveway only cost $300. “Can I sue the seller? He told me it was a ‘great’ car!”

Before I went to law school, I never would have imagined these phone calls as a significant part of my future. Especially not at the rate I get them. But people being people, they complain.

So, I condense in this week’s podcast the various things I tell people who have bought cheap/defective cars and what I wish they had thought of as they stood at the curbside, talking to the seller they met three minutes earlier after calling on a Craigslist ad.

You see: There is not a whole lot I can do in 99.9% of these cases. So it is the preventive medicine approach where I rest my optimism. The audio:

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And the Video.

Pic at the top is all of the books I have written and/or written forewords to. (Ebooks not shown.)

Follow me on Twitter: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

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Steve Lehto has been practicing law for 25 years, almost exclusively in consumer protection and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! He wrote !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

This website may supply general information about the law but it is for informational purposes only. This does not create an attorney-client relationship and is not meant to constitute legal advice, so the good news is we’re not billing you by the hour for reading this. The bad news is that you shouldn’t act upon any of the information without consulting a qualified professional attorney who will, probably, bill you by the hour.

Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo > SteveLehto 12/15/2016 at 09:34

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Hopefully not. If you don’t do your research and don’t observe what a particular model is selling for used locally, you pretty much get what you deserve. Conversely, $300 is $300. Not much of a loss. Sometimes worth the risk if you’re handy or motivated enough.

deekster_caddy > SteveLehto 12/15/2016 at 09:39

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All of my first cars purchased with my own money were under $500. It was a while back, but my first purchase was a ‘80 VW Rabbit Diesel with 280,000 miles on it for $400. The rear spring bar fell out of it after a week. I talked to the guy I bought it from ‘as is’ and we decided to split the repair bill for having the rear suspension welded back together. Eventually the engine didn’t have enough compression to start cold anymore - we could get it running if we pulled it down the road and let the clutch out and dragged

My 2nd purchase was also as-is, a ‘84 Chevette for $400. That lasted about a year before electrica issues dragged it to the junkyard.

And finally, I had an ‘84 Olds Omega with the iron duke and 4 speed manual, also $400. That one lasted a few years longer than it should, having computer and sensor issues in a time when most mechanics were old school and we just kept throwing electrical parts at it until it was fixed. Eventually it chucked a pushrod and that was the end of that. I can’t imagine getting an attorney involved over any of these - they werecrap when I bought them and I didn’t expect much.

Rustholes-Are-Weight-Reduction > SteveLehto 12/15/2016 at 09:40

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I want to hear the story behind that footnote

jasmits > SteveLehto 12/15/2016 at 09:58

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Close, $650 for a 1991 Alfa Romeo 164. It was a pile of garbage, but I knew that full well when I bought it. It actually turned out better than expected because once I got it running, which it wasn’t when I bought it, the head gasket turned out to not be blown as the P/O suspected

Demon-Xanth knows how to operate a street. > SteveLehto 12/15/2016 at 10:03

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The way I view used cars:

Anything I do not check becomes my fault.

The only exception would be intentional hiding of problems (eg: bondo and paint over rusted frame). But if I didn’t check that the A/C worked, and it doesn’t work, that’s my fault. I bought my truck from Carmax, and I STILL went through looked at the suspension, the frame, the tires, noted a couple of spots that they touched up the paint and they ended up replacing a caliper and front rotors.

SteveLehto > Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo 12/15/2016 at 10:05

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The people who call me do not do “research.” But they do have the energy to complain about the $300.

smobgirl > SteveLehto 12/15/2016 at 10:05

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My first car was $200, purchased at a yard sale. Actually we decided not to buy it for whatever they were asking ($500?) but found it in the driveway the next morning with a note under the wipers saying they’d take our lowball offer. Drove it for two years, never fixed a damn thing on it. It leaked transmission fluid until the hole gunked up again, it would occasionally shut off on the highway for no diagnosable reason, but for $200 it was a much better car than expected! Scrapped it when I graduated and probably made a profit.

SteveLehto > Rustholes-Are-Weight-Reduction 12/15/2016 at 10:06

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Which footnote?

SteveLehto > smobgirl 12/15/2016 at 10:08

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That’s the one thing I don’t get: I sold my last car to a scrapper for $500. Why would anyone sell a running car for $200 to a civilian when a junkyard would probably pay the same or more for it?

Rustholes-Are-Weight-Reduction > SteveLehto 12/15/2016 at 10:12

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Did someone really think reading your posts (great btw) constitutes legal advice?

Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo > SteveLehto 12/15/2016 at 10:14

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That’s a geographical thing, though. You can’t get shit for junking your car here in WA. Highest offer I got on my wife’s last car - which ran and drove, and still is to this day — was $190.00

SteveLehto > Rustholes-Are-Weight-Reduction 12/15/2016 at 10:19

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Not that I know of. But back when I wrote regular pieces for Jalopnik, they put that language there. Pretty standard stuff. Kind of like at the beginning of Shark Tank when they tell the audience that the hosts are not making cash offers to the viewers.

SteveLehto > Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo 12/15/2016 at 10:21

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Really? I wonder if the value of scrap itself might have something to do with it as well. The cost of steel and so on.

smobgirl > SteveLehto 12/15/2016 at 10:23

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I can see being too attached to a vehicle to be the one who kills it. Also, I KNOW WHAT I HAVE, etc.

I doubt I would have agreed to scrapping mine but my parents just did it one day when I was at college and sent me pics after it had been stripped several weeks later.

Pyrochazm > SteveLehto 12/15/2016 at 10:54

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I’ve had pretty good luck with cheap cars. Picked up a 1990 Subaru legacy wagon for 600, drove it everywhere for about 2 years until it got stolen. After that I bought an almost new Kia spectra 5 for way too much money and it gave me nothing but problems. Got rid of that in my bankruptcy and got an 89 Camry wagon for 800 (with a 5 speed! It was great!) And my wife wrecked it. After that I picked up a 1992 Saturn SC for 562 (long story) that car ended up being gifted to my useless brother in law. Also many years ago a guy I worked with sold me his 93 escort for 300. That car had a lot of little issues but was otherwise reliable until it got squished in a multi car pile up on an icy hill. Currently my cheap car is a 98.5 Ford Contour I picked up for 800. It needed a driver’s side seat and tires when I got it. It’s been a good car the last couple of years. It needs the CAS replaced which I’m not going to bother with. Other than that it’s been problem free.

The 3 worst cars I actually paid a good chunk of change for: the aforementioned Kia, my 89 SHO had lots of issues, and by far the worst was my 1990 Toyota 4runner. Weird problems I’ve never encountered before or since. One example is the bracket to the clutch pedal breaking. Instead of releasing the clutch the bracket would flex. Ended up removing a good portion of the interior to weld it back together. Another was the rear axle snapping free of its mounts and shearing off the brake lines. I never really took this thing off road, this happened on an off ramp at 50 mph. That was a fun day.

Pyrochazm > Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo 12/15/2016 at 11:49

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I scrapped a 91 Jeep Cherokee that could have made it to pick n pull under its own power. I only got 220 out if it.

jimz > Rustholes-Are-Weight-Reduction 12/15/2016 at 11:59

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it’s pretty common boilerplate when attorneys write about legal stuff. AFAIK it’s a kind of “CYA” in case someone foolishly uses it as their argument in court, loses, then comes back and tries to sue because “you told me to do these things.”

same thing as anything health related where the fine print always says “consult a doctor before doing/taking (whatever.)

jimz > SteveLehto 12/15/2016 at 12:05

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Don’t remember the exact wording, but in auto shop class the teacher had a banner in the garage area saying “If you don’t have the time or money to do it right the first time, what makes you think you’ll have the time and money to do it a second time?”

McMike > SteveLehto 12/15/2016 at 12:26

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....there are used car lots out there that do sell really junky cars.

Checks out

deekster_caddy > SteveLehto 12/15/2016 at 12:53

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A couple years ago I scrapped a shell after I stripped all the drivetrain and interior pieces out of a car, so all it was was sheetmetal and some broken glass (it had rolled over). I got about $100 for the steel by weight - hardly worth all the effort. I stripped it out because I was specifically interested in the drivetrain and somebody else was specifically interested in the interior, so for those bits we got our money’s worth. But as raw scrap value, not much...

ateamfan42 > McMike 12/15/2016 at 15:33

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That guy is offering a better guarantee than even some “upscale” dealers do. If the car engine explodes they day after you buy it, he’s willing to get you into another car. For a dirt cheap car, that’s not a bad deal.

SteveLehto > deekster_caddy 12/15/2016 at 15:44

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The engine and drive train are part of what makes the scrap have weight (and value).

deekster_caddy > SteveLehto 12/15/2016 at 18:51

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Sure, but most (if not destroyed) drivetrains have more value to sell as ‘used needs rebuild’ over scrap weight value. At least, that used to be the case.

McMike > ateamfan42 12/16/2016 at 09:34

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I believe the “next day explosion” coverage only applies if you are on the pre-purchase test drive. He says after you buy it, they’ll only come get it if breaks down before you get home.

...Which is still better than some others.