I haven’t really searched for a car on the internet in almost a decade. I tend to be very specific about the cars I want, and that one was a 1997 Toyota Land Cruiser 40th Anniversary Edition in Antique Sage with triple lockers (not the one pictured above). J80s were just on the cusp of skyrocketing in price, so it was still possible to find one listed as a used car. I searched the main sites (Autotrader, Cars.com, eBay, Craigslist/SearchTempest) daily and found one within the 2-month timeframe that I had. It had some dings and was located in North Carolina, but the asking price was reasonable.
These days, there are so many sites, algorithms, and flippers that it’s nearly impossible to cast a country-wide net. Do you sift through the detritus on a mainstream site to find a deal, or try to beat the scalpers that lurk on Facebook Marketplace for a living? Japanese cars are no longer a “secret” so many are appearing on classic car sites like Hemmings. I try to avoid collector car auction sites because by definition an auction means you’re paying the maximum possible market value. And don’t even get me started on the physical auctions like Barrett-Jackson.
How do you find the car of your dreams for sale?
The most entertaining comment by next week will receive a prize. Scroll down to see the winner of last week’s QotW, “What’s your most terrifying near miss story?“.
It’s a dangerous world out there. Tom‘s tale of a near miss sounds like something straight out of a horror movie. Or a romantic comedy. Either way, sounds like the slick engineering of Honda Motor Co. saved the day. Rogue wheels bouncing along the roadway seem to be more common than you’d expect, because Negishi no Keibajo experienced one as well. And Joe Musashi‘s anecdote only reinforces the stereotype about BMW drivers. In any case, we’re glad everyone survived to tell us about their near miss stories.
This week’s winner was Ernie, who sounds like he used up a year or two’s worth of luck on a single night:
One very early morning back in the late 90s, I was driving home in my ’87 Corolla FX hatch hand-me-down after a late night of hanging with friends. While approaching a red light from the right lane of a two-lane street, I could see that there was an old Dodge conversion style van already stopped at the light up ahead. Rather than stop behind the van, I changed into the open left lane where I was next to it instead.
As I came to a stop, I glanced over at my passenger side mirror and saw a flash of headlights. There was a third vehicle pulling up behind us but by the speed of its headlights passing through my mirror, I knew it was moving way too quickly to stop at the light with us. I barely had enough time to finish that thought when it slammed into the back of the van next to me. The impact was violent and loud, splashing coolant, plastic, and glass onto my ‘rolla like a tidal wave of car blood and guts. The van was pushed halfway through the intersection in front of me and turned nearly 90 degrees. The third vehicle slid sideways and came to a 90 degree stop in the middle of the intersection.
At that point, I got a look at the third vehicle to see it was a Nissan Pathfinder style SUV. I turned on my emergency lights and pulled the emergency brake but with no more time to react than that, I hear the SUV attempting to start back up. It was dark but it looked like it was missing half its front end so I couldn’t believe that after several cranks, it started and struggled to stay in a straight line as it sped off into the dark.
I couldn’t just leave the driver of van, so I pulled off next to it and thankfully, the driver got out and appeared okay. There was a hole in the van’s driver rear quarter big enough for me to crawl into. The driver told me about how he would normally be driving home with his infant daughter as a passenger, but that she was with his wife that night (I found it strange that he’d have his daughter on a regular drive that late, but I wasn’t in a space to question). I agreed to stay until the police arrived despite having to work early. After giving my statement, the police shared that the SUV only made it a few blocks where it jumped a curb, taking out a phone booth and coming to a stop in a business parking lot.
Had I not made the last second lane change out from behind the van to next to it, my little hatchy and me would have been sandwiched in between it and the SUV. If you made it this far, thanks for reading and be safe out there!
Omedetou, your comment has earned you a set of decals from the JNC Shop!
Some of you may remember that I have worked for nearly 30 years as the mechanic at a small antique car museum in the mid west. I have seen the parts situation go from easy and plentiful, to almost untenable in that time. It seems each passing month makes my job harder and harder to accomplish. With the ongoing consolidation in the old car parts supply business, and the ever deteriorating quality of the parts that are available, my avocation has become a frustrating game with diminishing personal satisfaction.
In lieu of this, the next car of my dreams will one day be sitting on the showroom floor of the local Mazda dealer. A nice shiny brand new MX5 Club, which will be my retirement gift to myself.
Blitzpig I am almost there with you. As an ex foreign mechanic myself I am getting to the point that I may never buy a new “car” ever again. Or just succumb to buying an appliance. However my miata and at least one special interest car will remain. As I am buying an 1872 model year house (offer accepted) in the coming weeks I have decided to transfer my skills toward a place live with fun investment qualities. The new car selection has basically kicked me out of the love for new texting mobile pods.
I used to use Craigslist but it has been taken over by used car dealers. I don’t have a social media presence so I ask my friends to keep an eye open for me on sites like Facebook Marketplace. I also like Hemmings marketplace which has an auction component but I still see some good values on it. You cannot ignore BAT as it is the new bellwether of market pricing, but it too is slowly being taken over by dealers (this includes private collectors who effectively act just like dealers).
I used to use Craigslist but it has been taken over by used car dealers. I don’t have a social media presence so I ask my friends to keep an eye open for me on sites like Facebook Marketplace. I also like Hemmings marketplace which has an auction component but I still see some good values on it. You cannot ignore BAT as it is the new bellwether of market pricing, but it too is slowly being taken over by dealers (this includes private collectors who effectively act just like dealers).
Don’t go finding it. The car finds you. Fate.
I admit to Craigslist. I’ve looked at a few via Facebook marketplace but having quit FB a decade ago, I have to ask my better half. Fortunately, she’s a gearhead too. Bring A Trailer’s too much hassle. I one long haul purchase turned into a shipping nightmare where my broker disappeared with my money & the trucking company came after me having not been paid. A friend was an attorney versed in shipping & she basically said I was screwed. Never using brokers again. Hard lesson learned.
Yes, made the same mistake using a broker for transport. If you are buying a car and need transport, pay the extra money and use a dedicated vehicle transport company or better yet, make arrangements to collect the car in person. If you are a seller, don’t get involved in the shipping process at all.
A broker represents the lowest cost transport and only puts out the transport request for bid. They know nothing of the company that accepts the bid or even if they have the correct equipment to do the job. Once the bid is accepted by the transport company, the broker has no responsibility for anything going wrong. In one instance, the transport arrived at 2AM to collect the car which was very inconvenient since the car was located at a storage facility which didn’t open until 8AM. He stated if he couldn’t collect the car at 2AM he would go on without it and keep the money. In another instance the transport arrived hauling a load of lumber on a flat bed. He fork lifted the car on the flat bed and tied it down. The man who purchased the car was was furious when the car arrived and was fork lifted off the truck. Well, you hired him! Don’t use a broker.
Not that I can afford it, but I’m sure my dream car(s) lives on Goo-net
That was there I found my Crown, so I guess I already did…
Thanks so much! I’ll never forget that night. There’s a pic of that old FX hatch down a little on my Instagram page, @vaderhelmet. I wish it was the FX-16 but it was just the FX base.
After that FX hatch, I bought a couple year old Civic from a dealership near my work and after 7 years with that, I bought the 2007 Yaris I have now. Like you, I don’t have a lot of car shopping in my personal history. Over the years, though, I’ve helped several family and friends find cars and did so using cargurus.com. Like Auto Tempest, it’s an aggregator that pulls car listings from other sites across the web. It’s always served me pages of vehicles for sale by make, model, year, transmission, color, etc. I have found classic car results on it as I’ve had my eye on ’64 Chevys for a while, but I’m not sure how good it would be at finding a JDM classic.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go search for a silver FD RX7 on it… lol
The internet has undoubtedly become the primary resource for finding your next vehicle. What I don’t remember is which specific website I found my truck on… two photos, not from the best angle, and almost at night. It could have been anything. The good thing is that it was relatively close, and I encountered very professional sellers willing to give me their time to check everything. I think that nowadays, with more experience (a long learning curve in Facebook groups for the make and model), there are always some hidden gems. It’s likely that the model’s “social network” and WhatsApp groups are the most direct way to connect with the vehicle we’re looking for. It requires time, the right questions, and doing your own research on the owner and the particular vehicle (narcissism or a lack of knowledge leaves interesting records in groups about the vehicle’s problems). I suppose it ends up being a kind of hybrid between word of mouth and digital, conveniently at your fingertips.
WAY back in the 90s I would wait anxiously for the weekly print of Diablo Dealer, which was the East Bay Area’s weekly publication on classifieds. The biggest contributors to this publication was automotive, with many private party sellers too. The ad listings were similar to what you’d see in the classifieds of Grassroots Motorsports, and I’d clip those postings and slip them into my high school binder just to show off the car pics, even though I was so far and away from even buying those cars. But if you’re talking dream cars, that’s where I’d find them back in high school.
San Leandro has a lot of car dealerships, and sometimes my friends and I would roll up on my bicycles, snoop around and check out the cars, and soon the salesmen would just get bored of us since we’re obviously not in the market to buy.
During college I did some car searching on ebay, but then one day my housemate showed me this site called Craigslist, and WHOA did my grades plummet! All sorts of cars and nice pictures for me to drool over. I absolutely loved Craigslist, and it helped me buy my Miata, my 300ZX, my Prelude. It also helped me find all four station wagons that I’ve owned and gone through over the years.
These days I mix Craigslist with fb Marketplace, as the audience reach is obviously much larger. However, with quantity comes lower quality, and Marketplace demonstrates that with sloppy posts or scams or non-responders.
Funny I haven’t stepped onto a used car lot in years, maybe it’s because New England used car lots have nothing but SUVs now, nothing nostalgic.
I did manage to find the car of my dreams a little over a decade ago on Craigslist when it was still poppin’: A 1980 RX-7 in stardust blue. Sadly had to sell it to help pay for college, but sometimes I peruse all of the major sites nowadays just to see what’s out there for the ’79-’80 gen 1s. My greatest hope is that one day I’ll see my 7 again on a random listing since it’s the only classic I’d jump at, assuming I’d even recognize it or hasn’t been junked at this point. I don’t think it’s terribly difficult to find a decent price on SAs/FBs so long as you’re not too picky. They’re out there on the usual sites and forums, but in my case I’ll only ever want the one that got away.
I don’t know such answers. I wouldn’t know anything about finding a Silverstone RX-7 Spirit R.