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Tremelune Tremelune is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 3,108
Unhappy Time to sell my car...but it's in a transitional state

I'm currently living in Big Bear with no garage, with a 911 parked outside (soon to be two), and no firm timeframe as to when I'll move to a place with a garage in Los Angeles.

I don't have room in my fleet for two air-cooled 911s, so it's time to sell my '84. Here's the thing: though it is a factory M491, it's not an all-original creampuff that I can throw on BaT in a week—it's a unique hotrod; a re-civilized track car with (at least) 160k miles, a swapped engine, an unfinished interior, a fiberglass fender, slightly mismatched paint on the hood, inoperable sunroof, inoperable fog lights...a buncha little stuff.

It has it where it counts (a sorted '95 3.6 that consumes no oil, refreshed close-ratio 915, fresh suspension bits) and the damn thing drives beautifully, but I fear that potential buyers will view it as a neglected Frankenporsche instead of the meticulously documented, all-consuming labor of love that it has been to me for the last 3-4 years.

I see a few options:

1) Keep it. I can't keep it. I just can't keep it. It's being displaced by a similar car that can serve as more of a daily driver for me, and that was my ongoing goal for this car in the first place.

2) Keep it until I have a garage, fix some of the little things, list it. This probably makes the most financial sense, but it could be months before I have a garage, and then it might be more months of me messing with it to get it to...some state that I predict buyers will like. It's not nearly as fun to work on a car when you won't get to enjoy the fruits of your labor. I...I just have a very full plate for the foreseeable future.

3) Bring it to a shop, have them fix a few things, list it (while living an hour from most of civilization, trying to keep it clean). I dunno. When I buy a car, I like to go to the owner's house and size up the owner's meticulously clean garage and Ferraris, etc...I'm definitely not in that living situation at the moment, and nobody wants to casually swing by Big Bear (also, at 7,000 feet, the car is down over 50hp).

4) Do some kind of consignment deal with a shop where they do what they think will help get top dollar and cut them a slice. I feel like I've heard of people doing this, but I may have just made it up. This would be convenient for me, which has value at the moment, but might not net me as much as just selling it in its current state, depending on what buyers are looking for, and I'd rather an enthusiast get the lost value over some shop.

5) List it on Pelican as-is, see what sticks.

6) Maybe I can keep it.

I hate selling cars, and I'm having a real hard time pricing this thing, now and even work gets done. What would the pros do? ::

Old 03-01-2018, 06:25 PM
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