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Car Hunting on EBay, This Deal Just Clicked
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And this place, I found after making a few more clicks, sold some fancy used cars. BMWs, Jaguars. It shouldn't have made a difference -- after all, anyone can buy whatever they want from auction -- but for some reason, it gave me confidence that I wasn't about to do something really stupid.
I got a history report on the car by clicking on its vehicle identification number on the listing. For less than $10, CarFax, an independent firm, coughed up the details on the car's life, including whether it had sustained major damage, been stolen or whether its odometer appeared to have been rolled back. Everything came up roses.
What the heck. It was time. You take your chances. I sealed the deal.
After weeks of searching and dozens of cars perused, I would "buy it now." After competing with thousands of other bidders in the world's largest virtual bazaar -- and losing -- I got my quarry pretty much the old-fashioned way, by knowing a good deal when I saw it and by trying hard not to be distracted by games or gimmicks.
A few days later, I hitched a ride with a friend who was heading north. Little more than a couple of hours later, we arrived at our place.
There were cars everywhere on a piece of pavement that served as a showroom, and a makeshift office that -- let's just say -- apparently had not been tidied up in recent millennia. At the desk sat Lenny, disheveled but helpful, seeming at 2 p.m. as though he had just rolled out of bed. Across the lot was a considerably fancier work in progress, a bona fide showroom, with car logos and everything. These guys were moving on up.
And there was my car, looking as though it had just left the factory. About 10 minutes later, I was rolling merrily down the highway.
After a lot of work, it seemed easy. And I was lucky, no doubt about it. Nearly a year later, the car has heroically withstood a battery of endurance tests, and I got it for a lot less -- I'd guess $1,300 to $2,500 less, although it's impossible to know for sure -- than I could have haggled for from a local dealership.
Plus, my 2001 Saab 9-3 convertible, for which I wound up paying $19,700, is a lot of fun. Much more so than my eBay sandals.
