I’m sure that you, like me, are always happy to get a great deal on anything. Dawn is 30% off? Huzzah, no Great Value Dish Soap for this guy!
But a great deal on a car – man, that’s next-level (because cars are expensive, obviously). Even a small savings percentage-wise can mean thousands of dollars staying safely tucked in your mattress. And a super-score on a car is also super-satisfying because a good car gives you so much. I mean, can you imagine not being able to just go wherever you want, whenever you want, hauling whatever and whoever you want? Maybe it’s even a fun machine to drive, and/or it swaddles you in luxury. That’s just icing on the car-cake. Other than a house, I can’t think of a purchase that delivers more utility and hopefully pleasure than a car.
So yeah – getting a great deal on a car matters. A lot. My all-time best scores were my 1980 Honda Accord, a fantastic $500 find (if you’re a Member, you can read about it here), and my 2012 Mustang GT. The GT wasn’t exactly cheap – I negotiated exactly zero dollars off – but thanks to my employer at the time, I was able to get X-Plan pricing, which is fixed and low. No haggling, no muss, no fuss, just a brand-new, Coyote-powered Mustang with a bunch more money left in my pocket – which was spent on tires and speeding tickets in short order.
Now let’s hear from the gang:
Matt Hardigree
Someone sold me a creamy Volvo 240 wagon with 15,000 miles, owned by an older couple, for $2500. It was a great car and was, in theory, a starting point for a 302 swap. I never did the swap, partially because the car was in such great shape. When my wife got accepted to grad school we decided we couldn’t take it with us so I sold it for $2,000 to a family friend with the agreement I could buy it back. That friend sort of disappeared from the radar and I have no idea where the car went. I regret letting go of it all the time and wish I could have it back.
Mercedes Streeter
I scored a 2005 Smart Fortwo Passion Coupe for free. Yes, I got it for no money at all. There was nothing wrong with the car itself but with a state government. See, the original Smart Fortwo was never officially sold in the United States, but they were one of a handful of cars some crazy companies went through the work to make legal.
Unfortunately, federally legal doesn’t mean state legal and some states have no idea how to handle a modern gray market car. One of these states was Colorado. While the state allowed my car to be registered with its previous owner for a while, it eventually stopped registering the vehicle because the car couldn’t pass the state’s OBD-II scanner emissions test. I knew these cars were kosher in Illinois, so saying yes to a free Smart was a no-brainer.
Of course I still have it.
Mark Tucker
Easy: my ’89 Chevy K1500, in forest service green. $1,200 to buy, and I’ve spent maybe $2,000 more on it over five years. Oh wait, I forgot, I replaced the brakes during a cross-country trip. More like $3,000 in repairs. Still a bargain.
Stephen Walter Gossin
My best buy is the 230,000-mile Jaguar XK from Jacksonville, Florida that the seller bought at auction, then ditched in a parking lot for two years, untouched. He then found a 4-speed all-original GTO and completely forgot about the XK and sold it to me for $1800. I still can’t believe it.
I’ve scored some great deals, including a couple free vehicles, over the years. Somebody on Opposite-lock.com who has since become a friend, once sold me a ’98 Chevy Metro with 266k miles on it for $140. I ralycrossed it for two years, ran the inaugural Gambler 500-Illinois in it, and in all that fun still didn’t have $500 into the thing before the motor started knocking and pushing oil back through the filler cap. The chassis was too rusty to justify an engine swap. I shed a tear when it drove itself into the junkyard.
But I have to give the best deal crown to the ’99 Corolla I bought from a friend almost two years ago for $200. It had a bit of rust on it, and didn’t look pretty, but the undercarriage was surprisingly clean and it had only 93k miles on it. The car had been in his family since it was nearly new. Most recently his daughter had been daily driving it. She was moving to Japan, and so the car was ready to be sold. CarMax offered my friend $200 for it, and he instead called me and said, “Hey, do you want this car?” “You’re damn right I do!”
It shares daily driving duties with the ’06 GMC Sierra I bought new. I’ve probably got $1600ish into the Corolla now, but I’ve put about 12k miles on it, rallycrossed it a couple of times, taken multiple road trips in it, and the AC blows ice cubes still. It’s a fantastic little car!
Back in the old days (prior to moving stateside) in the UK, road tax was transferrable. I bought a few cars for just the value of the remaining road tax, so the car was essentially free.
Dumb question, but what is the ‘road tax’ and how does it transfer? Is that like a yearly fee?
Yes it is a yearly fee. Like the sticker that go’s on the tag in the US. Back then it was a round paper disk that went in the windshield. It was available for 12 or 6 months. If you sold a car the new owner could continue to operate it with any remaining time. They looked like this: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/ATNY3Y/uk-road-tax-disc-ATNY3Y.jpg
In 87 bought a rust free 68 E type roadster for $2500, it was a mess having lived in the desert after somebody started a V8 swap. Bought a rusty donor and ended up selling it halfways done for over 20000$
33GBP for a 1/3 share in an Austin Maestro on ebay. A couple of friends and I brought it on ebay to use for the Home (actually Calais in France) to Rome banger (clunker rally). Turned out to be a one owner car with low miles and had been well maintained. We expected lots of comedy breakdowns and the car didn’t miss a beat the whole trip. It was running better by the end of the trip than the start.
Not cars, but motorcycles (big surprise).
One is a 1980 Kawasaki KZ440B. (The B is the standard UJM-looking model and is less common than the cruiser-y 440LTD.) For $200 I got a complete – and almost completely disassembled – bike with no title from a seller a couple hours away. Not long after that I miraculously found a 440B rolling frame with a clean title for $150 from a seller a couple hours in the opposite direction. Woohoo!
The other is a 1981 KZ440LTD – assembled, complete, and with a clean title – for $150. It’s being de-cruiser-fied (handlebars, tank, seat) and should make a nice local putt-putt.
The car deals I’ve gotten sound amazing only because they happened a billion years ago, like the sweet ’72 Super Beetle for $700.
I have had the absolute opposite of “good deals”. These include, but are not limited to:
About the only car that’s ever panned out for me and been a deal was a 2006 Range Rover Supercharged I bought for $1,800 that needed a transmission. After that, some A/C work, a new fuel pump, and cosmetic stuff, it netted me a bit of a profit.
I don’t know why people ask me to go shopping with them for cars, because I clearly don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I’m impatient, do not like things being half-broken, and don’t really have a proper shop to wrench on things myself. And I don’t know where people are getting these sweetheart deals from, but they never come my way.
As a bonus, here are some cars I’m glad I didn’t say yes to:
You sir are exactly my kind of eccentric. Where do you live? I want to meet you and your collection. lol.
I am in the Oklahoma City area, and fairly well-known to every European shop in the area.
I would say you need a Lexus, but even they seem to have cursed you, so I really have no advice left.
Definitely a COTD nom. My kind of masochism!
Dear, sweet Kyree. That list of cars is like a list of what not to buy if you value money or your sanity. That being said, I almost bought a v12 XJS last year.
I got my 1982 Mercedes 300td wagon for $3000.
My current daily driver is a perfect 1998 BMW e36 I got for $2700. A/C is ice cold, not a single issue. Other than the fact that it’s a boring-ass 4-cylinder / auto.
Back in the mid-90s, my dad and I went in on a group of three vehicles from a company auction. $900 for three vehicles, including a 1985 K3500 with a blown 454. The other two ran great, and we drove them for years before selling both for several grand each. We couldn’t readily identify what was wrong with the 454, so we towed it to a local mechanic to take a gander with a boroscope. The truck wasn’t even disconnected from the tow truck before the mechanic offered us $2500 for the K3500, which we took immediately. So not only did we eventually sell the other two vehicles for a profit, but the K3500 more than covered their purchase price and about all the maintenance we did over the years on them.
Another was buying an old K2500 from another company auction for $401. My dad drove it for years, then sold it to me for a hefty discount of $400. I drove that for years before eventually trading it for a disassembled bracket racer that had exceeded the owner’s skills. I reassembled the bracket racer, rebuilt the engine, got it street legal, enjoyed it for a bit, and sold it for a healthy amount (don’t remember how much, but enough to pay off my student loans).
Bought my wife’s 2019 Infiniti Q50 with 6k miles on it in the fall of 2019 for ~30k. It originally stickered for ~46k and hasn’t cost a dime in repairs since other than two tires when she drove through a large puddle and happened to find a manhole missing it’s cover with the passenger side track.
LET SWG WRITE THE JAG ARTICLE!!!
My old Honda CR-Z 6MT. Bought it for $2500 CAD in early 2022 when used car price and gas price was through the roof. Car was sitting outside the back lot at my buddy’s shop. I saw it, poke around and car seems in decent condition, asked my buddy about it. My buddy went knocking the neighbor shop and the owner said he is trying to sell it for weeks with no bite, he said he customer surrendered the car to him as a collateral for no payment (owner is a boomer and doesn’t use fb or any online marketplace, and he has no idea wtf is a CR-Z too lol). Me and my buddy took a quick spin and found car is in good shape, aside from a dirty interior and desperately needs brake. We asked him the price and the owner goes “I don’t know, does $2500 sound fair to you?” We were trying desperately not to laugh as the price was absolute bargain even in that condition. I took it home and spent only $1200 total to fix everything plus abit of mods (because its a Honda, duh).
After DD-ing it for 8 months I got bored of DD-ing an underpowered 2 seater that is super inconvenience for my lifestyle. I throwed the word within my social circle that I am considering to sell. My buddy’s brother immediately offered me $8000 CAD for the car and it off to a happy owner (he still have the car today). I literally made 100% profit for driving a CR-Z for 8 months.
Now I am waiting for him to eventually sell it, i might ended up buying it back to use it as a Frankenstein K24 swap project lol.
Bought my 1994 Mazda Miata M Edition in 2019 for 5k with 47K miles…and the hardtop. Car was AND is still immaculate. It made up for losing my butt on my first fix and flip. Car has probably doubled in value.
My buddy and I split this 1971 BMW 2002 for $5k. We sold it for over 20k on BaT. We did fix a bunch of stuff, but man…. anytime you can get a complete roundie 2002 for under 5k, do it.
I am more than a little jealous! Great work!
My mom worked at Transamerica Financial. Sitting in the parking lot, they had a repoed Mazda rx3 station wagon 5spd manual that supposedly had a “seized” engine. They wanted $50.00 for it to make it go away. My Dad-who had never owned a rotary-engined car- was very curious, so he said “Why not?” and bought it. Towed it home, hooked it up behind his pickup, and drug it down the street while I sat inside and attempted to pop start it. I dumped the clutch, it started up, and my Mom drove it for another 3 years, and then sold it for $300.00. It was a cool little car with one caveat.It had a light to the left of the steering column that said something along the lines of Thermal Warning. If the car was shut off when that light was lit, it would backfire and belch flame out of the exhaust. We always knew when Mom was home!
In the late ’90s, before craigslist was a thing and browsing for old beaters meant the local newspaper classifieds, I jumped on an ad in the “Thrifty Nickel” (classified-ads only paper you could pick up for free just about anywhere) – the only car I’ve ever purchased sight-unseen. It was a 1962 Chevy II 4-door sedan for $250 – with 32,000 miles. It also had a hitch welded on – the seller was the original owner, an old rodeo cowboy in Cheyenne who had used it to pull a single-horse trailer. Paint was faded but the body was perfect except for the standard ’60s Chevy rust in the lower rear rockers. Interior was mint. The 194 inline 6 ran great although the fuel pump packed it in on the way home…flat towing it roughly 50 miles behind the ’65 Buick LeSabre I had at the time was a fun experience. Replaced the fuel pump and rerouted the fuel line (it was too close to the water outlet and liked to vapor lock), and my ex-wife and I daily drove that car for a few years before eventually selling it for $1000.
Friend gave me a 15 year old Toyota Tercel that had 2 problems: It would stall out after a mile or so of driving, and it overheated. Needed a new radiator and the gas tank cleaned out (had some type of rubbery goop around the fuel sock in the tank.) I drove it on deliveries for a year or so, then someone rear ended me. I told them, just pay me $300 and we’ll call it even. They said, go through my insurance. So I did. They paid me $1250, and said keep the car. I didn’t want the car, so I sold it on eBay for $150. So basically I got use of a car for more than a year and around $1000 in profit after repairs.
I bought my DD 2006 Saab 92x Aero for less than just the WRX drivetrain in it was worth. Only had 113K miles on it when I bought it 4 years ago.
I only buy cheap cars with cash, but even after driving them for a couple years, market value on most everything I sell is higher than what I paid for them when I bought them.
Those are stupid rare… I think there were 235 2006 Aeros made!
This seems as good as any segue into a long-form Jag article. Just sayin…
1989 Geo Prism LSi for $700 in (2005). Paid for it by working at the Old Navy in the mall every evening after school. Thing was absolutely rotted out, but I put a solid 20k on it over two years. Sold it for $300. It definitely wanted to kill me (stalled on left hand turns if there was less than 3 gallons in the fuel tank? But there was also something wrong with the filler line that the car would reek of gas if I filled it over 3/4? Sort of tough.) Eh maybe it wasn’t that great of a deal, but it worked out in the end.
1985 Vespa PX150E for $500. Hadn’t been registered in 12 years and had fallen into disrepair, but dropping about the same amount on tyres, rebuilding the fuelling system, and replacing the ignition system I now have a delightful little getabout!
Back in the day, late 1990s with GM Card in hand, I negotiated an absolutely killer deal for a new Pontiac coupe. Signed the contract and everything – about $8k after tradein. I went out to lunch to celebrate my negotiating awesomeness, only to return home to a voice mail message from the salesman, asking me to return to complete some additional paperwork. When I got there, he ripped up the contract in front of me, claiming they couldn’t make that deal happen, and had drawn up a new, replacement contract. I told him to go F himself and went out a bought another, better, car from a different manufacturer. I’ll never forget that day.
I feel like this exact question has been asked a few times already so I won’t go into details of either of these unless asked, but I bought brand new:
a 2013 Viper with a sticker of $142,490 for $85,000.
a 2017 Ford Fiesta with a sticker of $16,760 for $6,999.
I’ve also won a running 1996 Cadillac Fleetwood for free in a contest, and bought a running 1998 Pontiac Grand Am for $14 as part of a contest/special event.
Damn, at $14 you beat our raffle Jeep by eleven whole bucks!
It was either in 2014 or the 14th anniversary of the dealership that put on the contest, or both.
That was the one where everyone lined up across the parking lot from two rows of cars with mystery price tags, and sprinted to them. Whoever sat in the driver’s seat was given the first opportunity to buy the car for the mystery price. So knowing there was at least one $14 car out there, my future wife and I scouted the beaters ahead of time and selected our targets. She ended up buying a Chrysler 300M for $495.
Tell me more about the Viper! I like to think of myself as Viper adjacent… my brother in law has a 2003 that he bought totaled and rebuilt. He also works at a shop that builds twin turbo Vipers for roll and drag racing.
That one was pretty simple. FCA totally bungled the launch of the Gen 5 in late 2012. They made the Viper much nicer and much more expensive, and priced out the traditional buyer. So a lot of cars sat for a long time.
I bought my 2013 after 2 years behind dealership ropes. No one had even test driven it. The dealer had just received their first two Hellcats, so their Vipers had to finally go. They fire-saled both of them and I was lucky enough to get one.
Then later on, once the ACR was released and set a bunch of track records, plus with the general decline of naturally aspirated manual transmission sports cars, values started recovering. 2016-17 Vipers sold mostly for sticker I believe.
Bought my winter beater (GMC Envoy) for $1500 back in 2020. Everything was working until it wasnt and put more money on repairs that what I paid ($2000) but its working.
I paid $8000 for my 1973 VW Super Beetle in pristine condition with 28K miles back in 2020, according to my VW mechanic and specialist, also Hagerty, its worth around 16K
My ex gave me a 1996 Sonoma and a 1999 Ranger for free, and I just bought a Mazda3 with low miles in near mint condition for $250 (elderly owner ignored warning signs from a malfunctioning cooling fan and killed the engine).
When I was in high school, I paid 300 bucks (earned mowing lawns!) for a pair of 1966 Fairlanes that had been through a grass fire in the field they were parked in.
Spent a summer at my buddy’s house since his dad owned a shop and had a tow truck, engine lift, tools and knowledge, and built one completely working Fairlane out of the two, with some pick-and-pull donor parts along the way. Beautiful green-blue bench seats and all the elbow room you could ever ask for in the 289 engine bay.
My Prius, and I’m pretty sure I know why. It was cosmetically not great – scratches, dents, rust, and the interior looked like it had been used to transport rusty car parts. I was surprised the guy let his kid ride in that car, TBH.
Anyway, when I went to look at it he mentioned he was just looking to get rid of it so he found the cheapest similar car on Marketplace and priced his $100 below that. The catch is I’m pretty sure the car he was comparing to had a salvage title, while this one was clean (the title, anyway 🙂 ).
On the other hand, the salvage title car was in much better cosmetic shape and I think was a higher trim level so it kind of balances out, but I still feel like it was a pretty darn good deal.
Purchased an 01 volvo s90 from a coworker for $500. It had set at her parents house for a couple of years untouched. It had belonged to her grandfather. She wasn’t sure of the mileage. Got a new battery on it and it started right up. This was in 2010 so the car wasn’t even 10 years old. When I started it the mileage showed 48k. The only things I did to it were the timing belt job and a new resistor for the blower motor. Also purchased a bmw e39 wagon for $300 because the seller said it didn’t run right. One new Bremi MAF later and I drove it from where it was parked. The seller was not happy.