story time: the first car you went to look at as a potential buyer

[bob tilton]

read a lot of info here about people offering advice to first time buyers - a lot of useful info that i completely ignored. back then, five years ago, i didn't know about PPIs. i didn't know about bruce anderson's advice column. i didn't know anyone with an early porsche. i didn't know about the RGruppe.
i only knew that i wanted an early porsche before i was thirty.
i bought the very first porsche i looked at and put it on my credit card. did i pay for my ignorance...oh hell yeah. did i build the car i wanted...oh hell yeah!
so let's hear those stories about the very first car you went to look at with cash in hand. what made you buy it or what made you run?
pics more than welcomed.

[Shuie]

OMG that car is beautiful.

The first Porsche I looked at was a red euro SC. dual dansk, very loud. Nice car, but I had no idea what I was looking at so I bailed out.

Took a hard look at a very abused 968 on the used lot at the local dealership. Got a PPI and learned real quick that I didnt want the car. The mechanic that checked out the car for me put me onto a pristine 944S2 that I bought immediately after driving.

I took a much more senseless approach with my first 911, buying the first $5k flared pre '74 ebay car I found for sale. It turned out to be a good deal and I learned a lot from the car.

My current '72 winked at me when the PO pulled the cover off of the car in his garage. It was all over at that point.

[MovOvr1]

Took my list of possible models I wanted to look at to a local high end car dealer in the midwest who didn't have but one on the list but pointed me to a guy in Indianapolis who had exactly what I was looking for and said that he might be interested in selling. We talked and settled on a price. A week later I arrived and drove the car back to Cleveland (first time ever driving the car.) There was snow on the ground when I first went and inspected and didn't see any rust or drips from the engine and got to talk to the previous owners and the SINGLE shop that the car was cared for at its' whole life. Was pretty satisfied and felt comfortable with it so I bought it. Then on the ride home the right rear wheel bearing went....oh well live and learn.

[jmarenas]

I was always interested in an 87-89 911, however it had to be different (modded), thus love at first sight. Great car!

[lally911]

First car I looked at was an 86 911 with 30k miles. Thing was immaclulate painted in gold/sand color. Interior had light brown, chocolate brown, and white interspersed with some kind of plaid in the seats that was so horrible the excellent condition of the car didn't matter.

I didn't know about ppi's or know anyone who had a 911. Only knew that the vtec in my honda was not enough and that 911s were supposed to be fast with good handling. Good thing I passed on that immaculate car. It would have been a shame to hack it apart and turn it in to a track car.

[imcarthur]

I was buying remotely in Houston. From AutoTrader. The PO talked the talk, it sounded good. I had a Pelican (125shifter) check it out & drive it & he gave me a very detailed report. (Come to think of it, I still owe him dinner for that). He said it was very good.

I arranged a business trip & flew down. We met at the garage I had chosen (Swiss) & the car looked great & we decided that a drive later in the morning would be better because of traffic. So, we left it with Ueli for a PPI & then I gave him a lift in my rent-a-bomb to his office.

1 1/2 hrs later, Ueli called & the PPI uncovered low compression in cyl 3 & 4 (110 - 120 vs 150) & poor leakdown 55% & 50% in the same. Also some strange adhesive on the transmission joint. But Ueli said it drove very well & the results surprised him. Surprised the PO as well. I decided it was too risky for my first Porsche – especially a remote buy, so I shook hands & walked. I never even drove it.

Then a week or two later it popped up on Pelican as a new purchase for a new user. I PM’d him & he had not gotten a PPI. I really didn’t want to tell him what I had learned but some of you guys told me in a post that I should. I told him & suggested that he contact Ueli @ Swiss. He was pretty pissed at the PO (a lawyer) & disappeared then from the BBS.

And that was just the first . . .

Ian

[Fishcop]

I was thinking just like Bob... I wanted an early car. I wasn't allowed to buy until I'd sold my motorbikes and married my wife So I had time to research what I was after.

I looked at 9 early 911s which in this country is not easy. I made up a "checklist" of things to watch out for and wants. In the end I bought the car I have based on colour alone! The blue is really hard to go past, and it was the first car that my mechanic was "happy" with... unfortunately it was a sporto, but I have since learned to quite like it.

[Zeke]

I don't want to talk about ignorance when I bought a used '72 914 in '72! Or the '77 Targa in '81 with 60,000+ on the clock! Or even the '60 356B at Pomona that I took after only looking it over for 30 minutes. All had their problems, but the first two gave me almost 200,000 miles between the two. The 356 stung me, but I got away from it for what I paid, less DMV fees.

The only way to buy a car is by never seeing it, having no PPI and no receipts. Then, there can't be any surprises. Expect the absoulute worst and be prepared to part it out to cover your purchase price. (Meaning you can't pay much, either) Then, everything that turns up good is an absolute delight.

This has got the be the strangest theory you'll ever read, but it has been an absolute blast having the S. The rust has been tough, but hell, it's been a great road. Can't wait to do it again with a 356 Roadster. Send it to me in a bag. I just won't give anything substantial for it.

Crazy Milt.

[jtratza]

I ended buying my first (and only 911 I will never sell) on a whim from my wife. We were out looking for a fun car for me since my oldest daughter appropriated my 1986 Audi Quattro S for high school. It was a sunny February day in Houston and we were crusing car lots when a 911 red Targa came into view. After taking it for a drive my wife said lets make the dealer an offer. That came as a complete surprise to me since I was only looking. Gotta love wifes like that.

The only precaution we took was calling the original owner from the salesman's office. He said it leaked a little oil which turned out to be a lot of oil which the dealer gratiously fixed.

No PPI. Knew nothing of the (slight though they be) advantages to having a 1987-89 model. Loved the last ten years and look forward to lots more with the same car. But I'm still gonna but an early model as a project.

[jpahemi]

Bob:
Do you have more pics of your silver beauty?
Regards,
J.P.

[Zeke]

Tom, I know that's a typo about buying your car "from" your wife. But I did do that.

On the '72 914 I mentioned, that was for my first wife. We divorced and I took a Mercedes 250 SE sunroof and a pick up. She kept the 914. Five years later, I bought the same 914 from her.

I know I've told that story here a couple of times, but I really did buy the same car twice.

[Hoffman912]

saw online an add for a 67 912 coupe for sale for 2800 in philadelphia.

we called about it, the guy questioned ou motives, who were we, why did we want the car.. when we told him said it needed a little work, but was very nice car otherwise. we agreed to stop by on saturday morning and check it out

so my dad and i went to look for it. it was in the heart of the gheto.. right near camden, nj.

well we were looking for a nice driver/fixer upper.. thought what the hell. so we to the 9 hour drive from columbus, spend some quality bonding time with my old man,he was sharing stories about cars he used to have or cars he worked on, and i asked questions about how to do this or that.. to get a full idea of what he was talking baout. at this point i really didnt know much about cars. all i knew was that aircooled porsches and vws are the best (my old man brain washed me as a kid.. he is a vee dub nut), and a few things i learned from him n the garage.

so we get there.. the seller is a complete ass. we arive at 10 am, didnt ask how was the drive or anything.. just asked what the hell we wanted. "uh.. we spoke to you the other day.. remember we told you we were comming down to look at the porsche this morning' "ah thats right..." we walk over to the garage, he opens it, 'here she is! isnt she a beaut".

floors.. none.. rockers.. swiss cheese. the seats were somewhat in the trunk.. but there wasnt a floor left in the trunk. the color was camoflauge.. irish green with rust spots all over it.. hahaha..
the place was a living rats nest.. you could see where they bedded.

to say it was rough is like saying anna nichole smith is 'out there'

no.. this car was ****ed UP. we talked about it and looked aroud it for a few mins, then as we were leaving the guy told us he would sell it for 1200, as he knows its rougher than he lead on, and just needs to finally sell it. we say wtf.. we'll just use the motor in a vee dub project my dad had. so we ask him about a uhaul place we passed along the way. 'you dont wanna go there.. the owners a n*gg*r... " we shrugged, ignoring his ignorance, and asked about another place, he made another unsettleing comment.. we told him ok, we're gonna go out and find a trailer, we will be back..

when we get in the car, i said what an ass hole, and my dad, man of wisdom and reason said, lets go to hooters. so we went to hooters, didnt even talk about the car, just ate our meal, got back in the car and kept going til we got home. we didnt even look back.

4 mos later we found my current ride in southern indiana. 99% rust free, and a nice driver it was.

[bob tilton]

i knew there would be some good stories. harry i almost thought you were talking about the car you now own as i was reading the post. there is no way you could have bought that nice of a car for $1200.
glad i'm not the only one to have bought the first car. i like your advice milt makes perfect sense to me. reminds me of all my cautious friends who were waiting for the real estate market to dip here in cali. no such luck.
jpahemi - this ones for you:

[Steve87-911]

Being the impatient type, and after the CFO (wife) finally caved in to my non stop whining, I only looked a three cars before I bought mine. But it stood out from the others so much and the PPI was great, so I jumped in. The car was so purdy and fast that I had to nab it. So far so good. Just gas and oil so far, oh... and that new clutch I put in.
So much for my "weekend" car. My other cars just collect dust now.

[Hoffman912]

Bob, no, i got mine for under 5,000 in 98. today the values have gone up.. talk about looking for the right model at the right time!

no matter how much the values go up, im never going to part with this one.

[Jack Olsen]

I bought mine sight unseen, with a PPI arranged by the seller.

We live and learn.

I bought it based on the top picture. The lower picture is from when I finally picked it up.

[jshape]

The first one I looked at was in 1966 in Warren, Ohio - a 1952 coupe that was ivory in color with a pretty bad repaint. I remember that the guy wanted less than $1,000 for it and it was something that I could have afforded. But, the transmission was a bit squirrelly and in a rare case of practicality, I passed and bought a 1965 Corvair instead. 20/20 hindsight is an awful thing.

I have always wondered what happened to that car - I wrecked the Corvair when it hydroplaned on me on the turnpike.

[Isabo]

I've taken the text from the thread I started: Buying and bringing home my girl (long) Since I wrote it my husband has taken to lurking on Pelican sometimes and read it. He apologised and told me he hadn't realised how badly he had acted, his apology ten years after the event was accompanied with the present of a Porsche chronograph. Since my original post the interior has been freshened up a little, I've fitted new doors but she's still not very presentable. Typical Italian Porsche owners look down on me as if I'm a poor relation they're embarassed about as my car is neither new, nor original and very scruffy and battleworn. I have been snubbed at a couple of Italian Porsche events and by a couple of owners. I shall not be going back, people like that are superfluous to requirements (comment to me from an early 996 owner: the only reason you don't buy a 996 is because you can't afford one, hope he can afford a 997 now that 996s are no longer made). I would love to have her look like some of the cars I see on Pelican, but if I did perhaps I would be afraid to use her. I don't think I will ever get her really sorted, she's a user, not a showpiece and I certainly won't sell her. I did some sums this weekend and I came to the conclusion I could have bought a new 993 and maintained it for the same time period for what I've spent over the years.
NO COMPARISON! My car, Tristezza, has soul!

Buying and bringing home my girl
Reading the thread on worst road trips brought back how I bought my car and took it home. I feel easier about it now and I'm no longer so young, silly and scatterbrained. Hope this makes you smile.
I was visiting my sister in England with my fourteen year old daughter. My brother-in-law invited a friend of his for dinner one evening, (Milu, he also posts here sometimes, he's now one of my best friends and occasional employer), he turned up in a car that looked like sex on wheels, a new dark gray metallic 964 with a bodykit, the conversation turned to cars and I mentioned How much I would love a 911.
BIG MISTAKE number 1.
My brother in law said there was one for sale at a nearby petrol station and he thought it was on Italian plates. After dinner we went to look at it.
BIG MISTAKE number 2. It had been polished to within an inch of its life, this didn't hide the stone chips, dings, scratchs, it was a cheap and nasty 2.7 RS conversion (2.7 RS,My dream car because it's what my dad wanted, he had an S) It looked sad, lonely and forlorn, it was love at first sight. Milu was with us -
BIG MISTAKE number 3. MILU has a heart of gold but he's one of those friends you sometimes wish you didn't have (I HAVE TOLD HIM THIS TO HIS FACE!) He is the friend who will convince you to go to a sleazy nightclub to drink tequila slammers when you have a major presentation the next morning, his ex business partner, an industrial strenght arsehole, used to be a tee total family man, a couple of years under Milu's inluence and he became drunken womaniser with a half share in a Porsche he couldn't afford, Milu is the friend who will convince you to buy a camelhair coat by MAX MARA with your rent money, he accompanied a friend to pick up an ELNA sewing machine (the Rolls Royce or maybe Porsche of sewing machines)for his friend's wife, they used her money to buy a BMW motorcycle. What makes him so dangerous is that he sincerely believes that these are rational and mature choices, he is definitely from the far side of the twilight zone. I was putty in his hands. Not helped by being encouraged by my brother-in-law and my daughter who loved the idea of mummy picking her up from school in a ratty pseudo race car when everyone elses mum has a sensible city car.
I didn't sleep that night from thinking about that car I wanted it so much. I tried phoning my husband but he was travelling on a business trip and I couldn't get hold of him, I was buying myself a sportscar when we got home(a Mazda) but this was what I really wanted, ignoring the fact that I would still need a car to use every day. I was so afraid of someone else buying it that I borrowed the money from my brother-in-law and bought it after he and Milu checked it out.
BIG MISTAKE number 4. That car was going nowhere, the paperwork on the car was a complete mess, the RS conversion was cheap fibreglass, the interior was stripped out etc, etc, etc. The car had been sold cheap when its owner destroyed the engine while on holiday in England, the engine had been replaced and it was being sold on. To give credit to my buying assistants they got the price down to real bargain level and mechanically the car was good, however, there was no hurry to buy it!
I kept trying to get hold of my husband but he was always travelling and the two times he phoned I was out doing the deed.
BIG, BIG MISTAKE number 5. Buying a ratty old car without discussing it with your other half, especially when he believes cars more than a year old are things you sell, NOT BUY!
The next thing was getting the car home, any sensible person would have had it professionally shipped. No, I decided to drive it home, Potentially, this was big mistake number 6. as it happens it wasn't, but it wasn't clever with such an unknown quantity of a car and zero mechanical knowledge.
We loaded the car up (roll bars are very convenient for coat hangers), my brother in law and Milu kept using up important storage space with things I thought were pointless at the time, such as duct tape, bits of wire, molegrips, aerosol tyre inflator etc etc.
Driving the car for the first time on a proper drive as its owner I suddenly felt a million dollars, the car was so much nicer than it looked. The drive to Dover was a dream, we took off the perspex pop out sun roof, listened to the anaemic stereo and the raspy exhaust note - wonderful. On the hovercraft crossing the channel I started having doubts about my sanity in buying this car. The more I worried about explaining it to my husband the faster we seemed to be eating up the miles. If I hadn't had my daughter as a witness who would blab to daddy I am sure I would have dumped the car by the side of the road,taken a train home and written of the money to experience. When it looked like rain and started gettting cold, I learned the merits of the duct tape. We had to use it to keep the sun roof on as we'd damaged, or perhaps they were already damaged, the clips in removing it.
On Milu's advice we didn't take the short direct route through Switzerland but went down through France, the objective was to minimise the number of customs crossings and the hazards of document checks. My mind being a bit more than elsewhere I missed the exit I should have taken.
I should have doubled back, instead I looked at my map and decided on an alternate route and went on. What looked like a sensible route on paper was anything but, instead of taking one of the tunnels through the alps I ended up going over the top on minor roads, a fantastic drive and a great way to learn about driving a 911 but not what I needed. We stopped for petrol outside Turin, and I saw I had a cracked headlight lens - just to be safe I used some tape on it. Looking at my new toy it was filthy and looked even more disreputable. Before my husband saw it it was going through a car wash.
BIG MISTAKE number 6. A few miles from home I took it through a car wash, it ripped off the rubbishy home made ducktail! More duct tape and the poor thing looked even worse!
If this was a fairytale my husband would have been all keen on it at first sight as I was and the car would have proved to be ultra reliabe, needing only routine maintenance. My husband's reaction when he saw it was as bad as I had expected, the atmosphere in the home was pretty awful for weeks and didn't improve even after he added to his fleet of motorcycles without mentioning it first. My mother-in-law saved the day by backing me up and telling him he was making mountains out of molehills. When he understood my 911 was a permanent feature, unlike his toys, he started to warm to it, sorted out the paperwork (that took almost a year!) and actually started working on it for me. I've had it for almost ten years now and it's been about as reliable as you could expect for a ratty old car. We've played together on circuits and on hill climbs a few times and I can't immagine life without my 911. It's just had a 3.0 engine fitted which is absolutely glorious and I am now saving my pennies to have the bodywork sorted.

[Isabo]

Jack's BBl2 is what I would like mine to look like. The reality of my car is worse than Jack's before picture Maybe the snobbish otalian owners are not totally wrong and I am bringing 911s into disrepute
Pictures? No chance!

[Bob's Flat-Six]

Here's an 84 911 Cab that I looked at back in 1997 that was a nice Porsche. Not my first, just one that got away, I guess ? I should have been looking for the best S I could find.

The owner ordered it and picked it up at the factory.
I wasn't really looking for a Cab but would have bought this car if I could have gotten together with the seller.
He just didn't make himself available, and I think our timing was just off.

He also had a brand new 89 Speedster in the garage that had about Sixty miles on it. It was black/blk/blk and Sweet looking.

He had ordered it too and said he could have picked up a fast 20K over what he paid when it came in but thought the prices might go higher. Well, there went that 20K

Here's the old auto trader pic I stuck in a book.