Beware Of Cars From Far Away - The Podcast

"SteveLehto" (stevelehto) 04/06/2017 at 09:00 • Filed to: None

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There is a directly proportional relationship between how far away a used car is from you and how much trouble you will have when you buy it. I think the trouble might even go exponential when you cross state lines. But I’m not talking math here - just car trouble.

Nowadays it is not uncommon for people to find cars they want to buy that are far away. Like in other states. In the old days, we didn’t have this problem because most of our car shopping was done with local advertising in newspapers. No one ever sought out a car in another state because there really wasn’t a way to do that.

Now that there are many ways to do that - Craigslist, Ebay and so on - people think nothing of shopping for cars in faraway lands. And the farther away the car is, the greater the problems I hear about. And for some odd reason, many of these things that seem obvious in hindsight don’t occur to the buyers until it is too late.

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LongbowMkII > SteveLehto 04/06/2017 at 09:06

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So basically, don’t go looking for a BRG Jaguar XF, just wrap one of the white/silver/black ones?

SteveLehto > LongbowMkII 04/06/2017 at 09:08

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I have different levels of warnings. “Beware” (compared to “Don’t”) means that you CAN do this, but bad things might happen if you are not careful.

Seriously, I hear about people who fly all over the country, buy as-is cars from strangers in other states, and then wonder how on earth they got ripped off!

Demon-Xanth knows how to operate a street. > SteveLehto 04/06/2017 at 09:20

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It’s actually quite frequent on Corvair boards for someone to post a car for sale and ask “Does anyone know this car?”, or ask if someone nearby can check it out. Quite frequently people come up with a remarkable number of details not left out of the ad. Most of the time the person asking is quickly dissuaded. If I wanted to by a Corvair in California and have it shipped to Virginia sight unseen, I could easily find someone in California who knows more about Corvairs than me to check it out. It’s actually quite a nice thing for a community.

Avoids situations like this one:

jimz > SteveLehto 04/06/2017 at 09:25

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I think the proper response to that guy should have been “I can’t help you, because you’re from Ohio.”

Wil Haginen > SteveLehto 04/06/2017 at 16:31

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Around the late ‘80s or early ‘90s, I recall my phone number area code going from 313 to 810, and then 810 to 248 a few years after that. Back when it was 313, I remember being able to roughly gauge where someone lived just by the first three digits after the area code. I had no idea that was because it was linked to a physical exchange, though that makes perfect sense.

Regarding buying a car sight unseen from a faraway place: I’ve told this story before, but long story short, a guy living across the country tried to sell me Mazda RX-7. What he didn’t expect was that I actually had a friend in his neighborhood, and he just dropped off the face of the Earth when I tried to set up a time for my friend to go out and inspect the vehicle.

RyderSt > SteveLehto 04/12/2017 at 08:38

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Steve,

I haven’t gotten myself into a bad situation yet, but I’m in the market for a vehicle that’s fairly difficult to find with the color and options (my wife) wants. I found a 2008 Porsche Cayenne Turbo with all the options I want. I found it listed on a porsche forum and it was an active user on the forum (big plus). I found all his threads on the vehicle so I’m confident that he really did his homework and fixed all the preventative stuff in addition to anything that looked worn. I’m located in the GR area of Michigan and the vehicle is in Atlanta GA. I’m going on a work trip within an hour of his location later this month and i’m trying to setup the deal. The seller is fine with dropping the car off to a porsche dealership for an inspection (another plus). Everything seems on the up and up, and it’s an enthusiast owned vehicle. However, he did say that his lein is with Penfed, and there’s no local locations. He’s offered to write up a bill of sale and do whatever is necessary to broker the transaction. I just wanted to know if this is all worth it and what I should do to protect myself. Should I get two cashier’s checks one to his credit union and one to him for the difference? Will the bill of sale protect me? I have no red flags so far communicating with him so I have good feelings so far, but it is a long haul back to Michigan (750 miles). Let me know what you think.