How to make a Jalop by fire

"promoted by the color red" (whenindoubtflatout)
02/12/2014 at 01:53 • Filed to: Just Jalop Things, Millennials

I recently drove my housemate to the mechanic's to pick up his car that needed some brake work and I started browsing the circlejerk that is r/Honda (10% better than r/Acura) after I got home. Spotted a post about somebody's first Civic, which brings me to the following story.

EDIT: The person above is a different guy than the person in the story. Changed to make it less confusing.

I've always been that guy in the friend group who could (and would) find you a car, and I had a pretty good record - most, if not all the cars I recommended made their owners very happy. They were almost all Honda Fits, so make of that what you will.

About a half year ago, my friend asks me to help him find a car in the Midwest. Now, my friend is a smart guy - graduated from a major West Coast university, name on published research, and was accepted into a master's program in the Midwest, but he knew nothing about cars other than how to drive one.

The (relative) lack of public transport in the Midwest coupled with a need to buy quantities of things that don't fit on public transport meant that he was looking to buy a car of his own. He didn't want to do car-sharing, so he scraped together a pretty nice chunk of change (about a few thousand USD) because he wanted to do it on his own without help from the parents.

This was going to be interesting! Most of my finds were West Coast cars and nobody ended up buying them for one reason or another. One guy ended up buying his new Fit because his mother thought people only sold cars because they were broken or needed servicing. That's fine, more for us.

I first stopped at CarMax in the hopes of finding a car that wasn't held together with chewing gum, chicken wire, and somebody's half-baked hopes and dreams - if not pulling a Doug DeMuro. But CarMax doesn't operate in that state and I don't think my newly licensed friend wanted to do an interstate road trip in a day-and-a-half. Ah well, I still managed to log some fantasy hours looking at //M and AMG products.

Off to the Midwest Craigslist we went! We dug through rusty shitheaps, shitty rustheaps, rebuilt wrecks that owners swore up and down "were just as good as factory!" and the really good stuff that only fools people like us would appreciate, all at prices that made this West Coaster green with envy. Clean Hondas that haven't been stolen, stripped, and/or burnt to the ground! Integra GS-Rs that don't look like some Fast and the Furious reject!

Sadly my friend is not the "69 Chevy with a [327], Fuelie heads, and a Hurst on the floor built by [him] and his partner Sonny"-type but more of the "It's a car!"-flavor. Not a Jalop by any means, and the fact that I couldn't personally inspect the car killed any hopes of making a Jalop outta him. Maybe later, I told myself.

That left us with the usual suspects: Corolla, Camry, Accord, and Civic. And the odd Ford Focus. Over the next month and a half we (and some of you lovely folks) pared down the local Craigslist. Out went the supercharged Pontiac Bonneville. The salvage title cars were unceremoniously dumped. It was vicious. A Camry with a rebuilt engine at 100K? Cut. That pristine second-gen Focus that we almost went for? Turned out to be a rebuilt wreck. Goodbye. There was enough slashing to bring half the Doctor Who fanbase to orgasm.

When the dust settled, we sized up the survivors. A Crown Victoria Police Interceptor that sparked a long discussion on RWD and possible snow handling, a 1/2 priced Civic with a fresh timing belt, service, and a suspicious lack of plates, and another 100,000 mile Civic with lots of recent service but the timing belt suspiciously missing from the list.

He nearly bought the Crown Victoria Police Interceptor. No really, he almost did.

I knew it wasn't going to happen, but I told myself it would. He would love the V8 power, the FUCK YOU I'M A COP presence, and even the '80s grade vinyl pickled in cop sweat. But for some reason or another, he wanted the Civic. It was also a good bit cheaper, as I remember. He calls up the guy, who agrees to come by and show him the car. Looked pretty solid and he had an appointment to get it checked out by a good mechanic.

All is well and I head off to class (this is during summer). I get a text from three hours into the future. Guy hasn't shown up. Says he's stuck in traffic, but there's no traffic to be seen. That's not a good sign. More hours pass. It's about 3-4 in the afternoon on the West Coast and I get a call. Dominican guy (only description I have) finally shows up with his brother and his family.

They barely make it into the shop before it closes. Mechanic stays behind and gives the car the once over. Everything that's there is there, most, if not all the parts the ad says were fixed are actually fixed! As the mechanic's going over the car, my friend fills me in on the rest of the story. Guy pulls in with his group and a set of plates from another car (sequence withheld, but it's a personal plate referencing a popular Honda product). Car's belongs to the guy's wife but he can't afford the insurance so he's selling it.

Mechanic's done with his inspection. Car's fine, but A/C needs some work. Struts aren't so great either, but all the parts that matter work and, most importantly, the car hasn't returned to the earth as rust. Now it's my turn. "Should I buy the car", he asks. It's late and the others are getting restless. In Spanish, he tells me, they wonder why he can't make a decision. Mechanic quotes him about $1000 to fix everything (struts and a rusty exhaust among other things) on a $2000 & change car, but the car's structurally sound and enthusiast owned. It turns out that our Dominican friend is a bit of a mechanic himself. Take the car to his shop, he offers, and he'll refill the A/C and take care of a bunch of other things for chump change. My friend sees this as an okay deal. The papers are all set up just waiting for the signature.

I call up my dad, but he's not there. So I call up my mechanic cousin. Prices don't seem so bad when you think about labor, is what he tells me. Well, that's not a bad sign. So I call my friend back. The question is turned back onto him: Do YOU want to drop the cash on the car? He shrugs. It's about $2000 bucks - what's the worst that can happen? - and he signs the papers. Hands shake, pens scratch, keys exchanged, and my friend goes home with a 1997 Honda Civic.

In just a few hours my friend has just done what I have always dreamed of doing - buying a cheap and slightly broken car on a prayer in a strange land and having it all not end on the 10 o'clock news with me six feet under. The guy I never pegged to be a Jalop managed to out Jalop me in one single step. I didn't even negotiate on my car. My dad's mechanic friend sold it and we bought it. It worked and that was it. There was no last-minute, high-tension negotiation, no finicky behavior. I turned the key, depressed the clutch, slipped it into first, and drove off. (OK, I stalled it quite a few times, but then I learned how to drive stick.)

Maybe there's hope for him yet! He has shown interest in buying something sportier...

Epilogue: True to his word, the shade-tree mechanic fixes the car up as promised. A few months down the road, the distributor craps out. After a misguided attempt to fix and address what even went wrong over instant messages, he takes it to the shop and it's back on the road.

There was a pretty interesting story about the registration/insurance and how I came to learn about the YOLO attitude his state takes towards emissions, but that's for another time.

DISCUSSION (2)

NotUnlessRoundIsFunny > promoted by the color red
02/12/2014 at 02:10

Nice story, and well written. Thanks!

Slow4o > promoted by the color red
02/12/2014 at 09:17

Good story. I kind of did the same thing when buying my SVT Focus, but instead of having a friend look at it, I got some guy off a Mustang forum to go check it out. That guy plus pics of the car is all I knew when I paid for it to get shipped down, but luckily the car has turned out to be great.