There’s a saying that ‘there’s a butt for every seat’ or something along those lines. Every car has at least one person who is madly in love with it, and that person may be willing to travel long and far to get that vehicle. How far would you travel to buy the right car? What travel antics would you go through for your unicorn?
One of the worst parts about living in the Midwest is that everything corrodes. Even brands known for longevity like Toyota cannot beat ol’ rust. This sucks for car enthusiasts because fan-favorite cars like Mazda Miatas and BMW E39 5 Series cars begin rotting out before you can get to them.
You’re left with two options: You can repair the rust or fly to a part of America that doesn’t know what snow is.
I’ve frequently chosen the latter option. I don’t mind buying beaters and daily drivers from the Midwest, but my forever cars come from the South and the West Coast. Most recently, I flew 1,200 miles south between hurricanes to buy a 2009 Smart Fortwo Passion Cabriolet. I then drove the car back home in the road trip of my dreams.
In 2021, Sheryl and I drove 1,200 south into Texas so I could buy my 2002 Nova Bus RTS-06. We then turned around and drove the bus and her car 1,200 miles back home.
Perhaps my most ambitious car purchasing trip thus far was when I flew out to Los Angeles, bought a brand new 2016 Smart Fortwo Edition #1, and then drove that back to my home in Illinois. It was a 2,200-mile trip that was supposed to take 31 hours. I cannonballed it in 36 hours, which is accounting for all fuel stops and even a nap.
That trip was rivaled only by the trip I took to pick up my Honda Best. I drove 2,200 miles to pick up the car before turning around and driving 2,200 miles back home. I’m not sure I have a limit to how far I’ll go for a cool car.
I don’t think I’m done yet. Next year, I want to fly out to Europe to drive an Audi A2 and perhaps some of the other cars I want to import.
What about you? How far and just how adventurous are you willing to go to get a sweet ride?
Apparently 10 minutes(from my job -so 30 minutes from home) to my local Toyota dealer to buy my perfect cream puff army green 2022 tacoma TRD pro 6 speed manuals.
Anywhere is fair game.
Well earlier this month I drove about 275 miles each way to pick up a RAV4 Prime from a dealer in Maryland. In my 20s, I bought a car 2,600+ miles from where I was living. That was a very special case. Back in 2003, all of my family was in either SC or NC while I was living in Washington state. I wanted a used Subaru Impreza wagon and my brother found a minty 5 year old one for sale in his town. It was 1/2 the price of anything I could find in the PNW. Brother is also the better mechanic and he gave it the thumbs up. I wired him the money and the car was waiting for me at my parents when I got off the plane. I got to see family, spend a week driving back, and save a bunch of money. That 1998 Impreza was a great car that stayed in my family for over 15 years.
About hour and half to two hour drive. So far any way. That’s about how far I went for current daily. It’s not necessarily the perfect car but it was a dang good deal.
I live in Chicago and my current record is either San Francisco or Vancouver, BC, whichever is farther. These were fly-and-drives, obviously. I love trips like that in old cars. I think the last car I got that was local was my Sentra SE-R in 1993, and it was new so it came from a dealer. Even my JSW was from Milwaukee because the dealer there had a ton of inventory. I used my bike and Amtrak to get up there for that one.
I’m far less certain with these things, because I just don’t have the constitution for long drives in my own experience. I’ve only bought one car myself and it was a local dealership, albeit it was not a “my perfect car” sort of thing.
But even something as simple as going 2 hours one-way to check out what looks like a nice conversion van–if I like it, I need to figure out logistics to get both vehicles home, and if I don’t like it, that’s 4+ hours of my life entirely wasted. I can’t imagine doing something like flying to a destination certain you’ll buy the car you’re looking at. Even the good-case scenario means tons of driving and in my case, napping on the side of the road, but flying back home? Absolute heartbreak and you’ve spent money on plane tickets.
Then this site has already covered that you can get the vehicle to come to you…but I don’t imagine many will be willing to do that, at least not private parties.
So, when I search for a vehicle, if at first I don’t succeed, I lower my standards.
I flew from home in Minneapolis to Dallas and drove home in my 911. That was about 1000 miles and two days of driving.
I’m currently obsessing over a car in Atlanta. 1100 miles.
I’m curious what steps you all have taken to have a smooth transaction when buying out of state?
I flew from southern Indiana to North Carolina to buy my last car. I would happily go cross country for a car but my wife…less so, so that’s probably about my max distance.
Not too far at all, because my local Nissan dealer will sell me many different vehicles equipped with cutting-edge technology that makes for more efficient, quicker, and quieter cars. Read my username for more info.
I got my mildly used ’23 suburban with 6900 miles in my preferred spec from Indianapolis.
The drive back to Miami was about 1600 miles with a slight detour to visit some friends in Tennessee.
The furthest I’ve gone was about 800 miles for the manual 2012 Mazda5 since there just aren’t that many of them, but it also allowed me to swing past my parents place on the way home to pick up some parts I’d been storing in their garage for the RX-7, so there were multiple motivations. Everything else my cheapness has won out and I didn’t want to risk a plane ticket with no way home etc, or they’ve been a whim, so generally about 50 miles.
I drove 9 hours from the Finger Lakes area, through Canada, to central Michigan look at a Corvette that I didn’t end up buying. I then drove 5 hours to Long Island to look at another Corvette that I didn’t end up buying. The 3rd Corvette I looked at that I did end up buying was 3 hours away in Albany.The next car I bought I drove 3 hours to Erie to look at (a 996 Targa) and would have bought but it sold in the intervening week; so I then drove 10 hours (through Canada again again) to western Michigan to buy my ATS.The 996 that replaced my ATS was only an hour away from where I lived after moving to North Carolina. Lucky!My Elise was 10 hours away, which was a bit of an exhausting drive back when I didn’t know its idiosyncrasies!This weekend I’m going to drive 3 hours one way to go look at an XK 5.0 that I’m probably not going to buy because I probably want an XKR and still need to test drive Corvettes; but I want to know how XK Coupes are since the one I test drove last weekend was a convertible. If I like the coupe more than a Corvette the XKR I’ll probably buy is also 3 hours away; but if I like the convertible more than a Corvette the XKR I’ll probably buy is 8 hours away in Indiana.Basically I go where the car I want is.
Why is the used car market so boring in the Rochester Buffalo/ Syracuse area? It seems like whenever I find something interesting its always in Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Florida etc.
From my location in Iowa, any spot on the map in the continental United States is fair game.
My dream road-trip is to fly to Rio de Janeiro and drive all the way back in a nice Brasilia, but there needs to be a massive highway expansion from Columbia to Panama before that can happen.
It is theoretically possible, though. In fact, one guy wrote a book about a similar road trip, in the other direction. Highly recommended reading.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1658266.Burial_Brothers
Thanks for the recommendation! It does look like a “good read” indeed. Given the both the journey and the car involved, I’m rather amazed that this is the first I’ve heard of this book. Ordered from Amazon and looking highly forward to kicking back out on the porch once this arrives. And, it seems a Manhattan would be the perfect drink to sip while turning the pages.
I’ve never really shopped for anything truly weird or unique. I’ve bought cars from a long ways off but I just have them shipped. There’s a hefty cost but likely less than gas/airfare, food and lodging along the way. I just try and find something close locally (to see how it drives generally) and have the one I really want shipped from wherever I can find it.
Of course, I’ve only done this with cars that still have a warranty from the manufacturer.
I guess if it was somewhat local, like 100-200 miles I might be willing to drive for something I wanted. I drove from Atlanta to Montgomery, AL once just to look at one I thought I’d buy but then passed on it.
As far as it takes.
For DD cars, I’ve driven 5 hours one-way. Although that car was really rough, so instead I bought a different one on my list, on the way home, which was only 1 hour away. Did I regret driving the additional time just to turn it down? Eh, not really.
I’ve commonly done 2-3 hours for other DD cars. I might drive farther, I just haven’t had to.
For my Fun car, my 996? Nationally. I bought one from 2,000 miles away.
Funny enough, my longest trip was for a camper instead of a car! Bought a new trailer on a Black Friday 2021 special, so drove the 700 miles from Detroit to Iowa to pick it up the second week in December. Drove out after work, slept, and outran a snow/rain storm the entire way back. The trailer was exactly the one I wanted, $14k cheaper than I could buy locally. To this day it still was a good deal, even with the market going soft on RVs.
I would drive anywhere for a new car or a holy grail. I have yet to do a cross country trip, and I think it’d be a great excuse to do so.
I don’t have a hard limit but in practice the farthest I’ve driven for a car has been a round-trip distance of about 800 miles. Most of my purchases have been much closer to home than that. So far the few that have been farther away have been much farther away, requiring a round-trip distance of 5000 miles or more, so for those I’ve instead purchased sight-unseen and had the vehicle shipped to me, including twice from the UK to Seattle.
Okay, fine, as a hard limit I have no intention of driving from Seattle to the UK and back in order to buy a car. Almost certainly.
I bet you’d fly & drive back an Amphicar.
Hey, someone crossed the English Channel in a bathtub, so…
Amphicars are delightful but honestly I’d rather have a Ford GPA. They want real money for either of these, though.
Farthest was when I found a dealer selling a Civic Type R for MSRP in the color I wanted, I flew to Phoenix the next day and drove 13 hours back.
Living in Austin, there are roughly 21 million people living within 200-ish miles of me, all of whom drive. Or at least I assume that all, even the toddlers, are driving based on traffic and driving ability.
So unless I’m looking for something extremely rare (I’m not), I can most likely find a rust-free example in-state. Just be wary of any car from the Houston area due to frequent floods.
I’ve flown to Miami (1500 miles) and to LA (3000 miles) to buy cars and drive them home. I did Miami in 28 hours, with a side trip to Daytona Beach on the way back. It took me 60 hours to get back from LA, stopping a couple of times to nap in the car and mostly sticking to posted speed limits since the car was of questionable legality.
These were fun / project cars that I was planning to have for a while, so rust-free was a huge factor in my shopping.
“It took me 60 hours to get back from LA”
This is all I heard:
When I drive that slow, you know it’s hard to steer.
And I can’t get my car out of second gear.
What used to take two hours now takes all day.
Huh – It took me 16 hours to get to L.A.!
No, no, no, I can’t drive…(I can’t drive 55!)
I can’t drive… (I can’t drive 55!)
I can’t drive 55!
Given there’s almost nothing left I want, I’d go a long way.
Since I live in rust-ville, I would absolutely drive down south to avoid a pre-rusted used car. Of course, down there you have to worry about flooded cars (especially this year), but I’d definitely consider anything in a broad swath from OKC east into Nashville.
One poster put it best- say it costs $300 in gas and two $100 hotel nights to find that non-rusty example of the car you want. How much rust can you get repaired for $500?
Are we talking about fun rides or daily drivers? I’m looking for a DD right now and Vegas is a cesspool of dealers. Problem is, the next closest dealers are a 5+ hour drive to SoCal or Phoenix.
2 hours. I don’t care if it’s a holy grail. That’s my max.
I completely agree that being willing to road-trip a bit to get the best car/deal is the way to go. People who only saunter on down to their local car dealer might as well have a sign on them.
I think the farthest I went from my home in NJ was to Toledo, OH to get a Silverado I liked more than any other in the eastern United States. Drove the 500+ miles out in the car I was trading in (they offered me a trade value I liked based upon my VIN and nothing else — helped me believe they weren’t bullsh-t artists) on a Friday after work and then was at the dealer when they opened Saturday morning. Signed what I needed to and hammered it back home that afternoon. Felt good to know I got what I wanted because I was willing to put in a little bit of effort.