What the fuck is it with classic car types?

[Guest]

Dovetailing neatly with shite meister's thread about selling his Camper, I seem to be meeting dickhead after dickhead when dealing with spares for my Amazon. I have a heap of them, some of which I need to move on.Prat #1 gets in touch, wants a door, bonnet and boot. Tell him that he can't have the door because I've got so bloody sick of people dicking me about and it taking up space that I've weighed it in.Predictably he complains his arse off, and then wants the rest of it. Fine. Good. We agree a price. Then he wants money off because he's got to come from some obscure fucking backwater down south, and baulks when I tell him to jog on.'Well, I haven't got the money to spend on a van and diesel' he says. 'Well' I retort, the fetid incredulity dripping off my lip, 'you shouldn't be bloody restoring a classic car then'. He then asks if I can meet him halfway. He will not make a contribution to the hire of a van or fuel. 'Well, I have to be cost effective' he says.So, you have to be cost effective at the price of me making about £20 on a pile of parts, that I have to spend all day delivering?Fuck's sake.His idiot son crashed his Amazon by driving like a bell end, and is now struggling to get panels (NO WAI!)When you have an old car, going mental distances is part of the craic in owning it. It's a given, so you just accept it and get it done. Obviously others in the classic car community do not share this mentality. Yeah, I'm short of money, but just because there's a recession on does not give you carte blanche to piss me about.Prat #2 wants a fuel tank. He asks and asks. Predictably he can't come and get it from down south from whatever hick shithole he lives in 'because fuel is too expensive' and wants a postage quote.So, looking to make a few quid I make a special trip out to my place in N Wales, get the filthy tank, muck up my boot, drag it to the post office and get a quote for sauce man.He doesn't get back in touch for, oooh, a week, and only then to tell me his financial circumstances 'have changed massively' so he can't afford the £40 I want for a fuel tank. Ah well, it'll be a pain in the arse going the job centre in an Amazon that's pissing its fuel away isn't it?I DESPAIR. These are just two of many little exchanges that I've had with other folk when I've put my stuff up for sale (I'm not even going into the hassle that gimp Old Skool caused me when he hassled me to sell the Celeste).Well, it'll soon be going on eBay as a job lot, or on a massive bonfire, I haven't yet decided.

[garethj]

Good rant, 7/10, could be longer and with more threats of violence Years ago when I sold my old Renault 8 for £500 I had loads of calls from people, all asking if it was a Gordini. A cylinder head for a Gordini is worth £500, you think I'll be flogging a car with a year's test for that little?

[Pete-M]

Ohhhh don't get me started.My beloved Range Rover Turbo. Bloke got in touch last year wanting to buy it, but wants it to be mechanically spot-on... something I've never managed to keep it for more than, oh, a few hours at a time. Lives in Sussex, wants it delivering, won't collect, won't forward any contribution towards the fuel, but says he'll pay for delivery once the car is there (along with a train ticket back oop north). That's about 260 miles from here, at maybe 15 mpg.He still gets in touch every month or so, and I still tell him that 'it's not right yet', which is true, and I am trying to sort it, but it'd be so much easier if he just said "Ok, if I come and get it, how much will you knock off the price...?" he'd be surprised. Nice enough chap, but ffs.The other issue has been selling the Jensen. Every month I get 15-30 messages about it "How much for cash" - well that much is obvious, it's the number after the £ sign in the advert, or near enough, and another 40 odd in broken English from various Spaniards, Germans, Swiss and Czechs wanting to know if it's an original convertible (it's not, but it's all proper panels and it's over £10k cheaper than a genuine one... it even says Convertible on the logbook), when they're told it's not they try and make insulting offers. One Australian chap offered $7000 AUS for it as 'I have to spend money importing it'. Sorry mate, you're not getting it for £3150, not when it's already cheap at £10k.Thing that really pisses me off is Spanish and German chaps expecting me to gather tons of unobtanium paperwork so they can register it in their country. Bollocks to that.

[shite_meister]

The mother of the lad who may well be purchasing my camper said to me despite dropping already from £3500 to £2900 "Will you knock £500 off because thats how much his insurance is" How about fuck off?

[Albert Ross]

Boot on the other foot here.I had arranged to go to Loughborough yesterday to buy some Michelin tyres and a fuel injection pump for my Land Rover. Turns out the tyres hadn't been taken off the rims by the guys mate. Not his fault. So he GAVE me the pump, and threw in a lift pump (brand new) to cover my costs!! He also wants to bring me the tyres when he's got them sorted. They're only a tenner for 4!Top bloke and no mistake.

[254575]

i dont know why people expect sellers to go above and beyond for no gain to them. if you buy the car, you come and collect. its not to difficult to comprehend? why does the fact you live in a hut in the woods, get a crap insuirance quote or can t afford the fuel? have anything to do with the seller of the car?

[Guest]

To be honest I can fully understand why reasonably decent cars get scrapped, the amount of tossers to be dealt with when selling a car is untrue.Got to sell the Cuore shortly, HI M8 WOT IS UR BEST PRICE WIL U SWOP 4 SAXO 1.1 MINOR CRASH DAMAGE

[wuvvum]

I sold my scruffy-but-MoT'd series 1 Rover 825D on the Bay back in May - it made its starting bid, £150. Chap phones up, wants me to take a half day off work so he can pick it up at lunchtime as he "doesn't want to drive it home in the dark", and he also wants me to put six months' rent on it for him, which I have to pay for up front and he'll give me the money when he collects the car. After three phone calls with him whingeing and whining that I wasn't doing enough to help him, I politely (ahem) explained to him that there was only so far out of my way that I was prepared to go for the sake of £150 and that perhaps he should go forth and multiply. Then I weighed the car in and got £330. I hate weighing in useable cars, but I was just so peed off with the whole thing by then that I ended up just saying screw it.

[Pete-M]

Whenever I've bought a car off ebay I've turned up within a day or so to collect, paid the money and gone. Ebay is ebay, if you win something then that is it. It's yours now go and pay for it. Why can't people see this?If you buy something without viewing on ebay then that is the risk you take, I bought my 325i off ebay and it worked out fine, but even if it had been a complete dog I'd have still paid up and taken the thing as that is what you agree to when you click the 'bid' button. If the ad states something is fine when it is blatantly fucked then yeah, I'll haggle, but most ebay ads are worded cleverly enough to avoid that.

[pogweasel]

Weasel's First Law of flogging cars on eBay:

The amount of arseache caused by the buyer is inversely proportion to the value of the vehicle

 

Absolute biggest headache is trying to sell old RWD Vauxhall's & Opel's. Every single time your auction will be won by a guiness-slurping tarmac-rallying fucktard who WILL mess you about for as long as your resolve will last.

 

And some of the incredible swaps and stunts beggar belief.... as well as the usual '£100 colect 2 nite' rubbish, I have genuinely had people try to offer me a swap of a M-reg Mondeo (no t&t, blown HG) against a Volvo 240 Estate (full ticket), and a fridge + bicycle + some methadone against a Mk5 Escort. What bloody planet to these folk live on?

 

On the other hand, anything over a grand or too old for thick peasants to desire is a doddle to sell.

[Guest]

Weasel's First Law of flogging cars on eBay:

The amount of arseache caused by the buyer is inversely proportion to the value of the vehicle

 

Absolute biggest headache is trying to sell old RWD Vauxhall's & Opel's. Every single time your auction will be won by a guiness-slurping tarmac-rallying fucktard who WILL mess you about for as long as your resolve will last.

Especially true in the case of Oldskool1977.

Substitute 'RWD Vauxhall and Opel' for 'RWD Old Japanese Car', and 'eBay' for 'Retro Rides' and 'selling' for 'if you actually give me the fucking obscene price you're offering will you just take it and fuck off and leave me alone.'

[Pete-M]

Especially true in the case of Oldskool1977. Substitute 'RWD Vauxhall and Opel' for 'RWD Old Japanese Car', and 'eBay' for 'Retro Rides' and 'selling' for 'if you actually give me the fucking obscene price you're offering will you just take it and fuck off and leave me alone.'

Is that window-licker still about? If ever there was a fanatical gobshite then there's ya man.

[Guest]

Skool has been banned now, or at least I think they said he had, either way he posts no more. To me he just seemed like a thoroughly odd person, he posted up at some point that him and some other guy were going to make a business selling classic cars or something, bet that is going swimmingly.

 

I made this back when things were "hotting up" but the thread it was in got axed:

 

You had to be there I think.

[garethj]

Didn't Alistair on R-Rides have huge strife when selling a car on ebay? Threats of physical violence against him and his family, refunds wanted after the car was collected etcAfter that, dealing with window lickers seems a doddle

[M'coli]

 

I made this back when things were "hotting up" but the thread it was in got axed:

 

You had to be there I think.

I wasn't there, but I appreciate the genius of that - I was a "Back to Skool" fan!

 

OldSkool hacked off a lot of people on the PC forum too, me included.

[Pete-M]

I made this back when things were "hotting up" but the thread it was in got axed:

 

You had to be there I think.

Class. I enjoyed baiting him on PC's forummy thing, but I wish I'd thought of using Skooldaze.

[Guest]

 

Especially true in the case of Oldskool1977.

Substitute 'RWD Vauxhall and Opel' for 'RWD Old Japanese Car', and 'eBay' for 'Retro Rides' and 'selling' for 'if you actually give me the fucking obscene price you're offering will you just take it and fuck off and leave me alone.'

Is that window-licker still about? If ever there was a fanatical gobshite then there's ya man.

After being banned from the Practical Classics forum (I wasn't on there when he was, but I read the utter gibberish that he posted) he then registered on Retro Rides, bringing a lot of baggage with him. He started upsetting a lot of members, and deleting many of the posts he'd made. Why he did this is anyone's guess. I reckon he did so to cover up some of the comments he'd made, as when people started to complain to the mods none of them could find any iffy comments.

 

Pog then held a poll asking how many people wanted him banned, and loads agreed. The mods did nothing (because they had no direct proof of wrongdoing at that point) and Pog and Dick Deluxe left in protest. Oldskool then put on suspension, followed by a permanent ban when HoTwire was on the receiving end of one of his insane tirades via PM. He was threatening a lot of people and users were getting sick of it. Eventually it caved in on skool because he couldn't delete the private messages he sent to people.

 

He started really hassling me to sell the Celeste after seeing it in my sig. Like to the tune of 3 or 4 PMs a day. The record was 6 in an hour. At that point he hadn't hit his apex of lunacy and was just a scatterbrained annoyance.

 

Stupidly, being skint for the money and actually believing for a split second that he wasn't a forum person (I've met a lot of people in person who are better \ different in real life) and that perhaps he was for real, I ended up speaking to him on the phone.

 

He didn't half go on, but didn't seem that tapped.

 

After promising to send me a deposit, and my answer phone and text messages going unanswered (he'd always call me from a withheld landline after I rang him on one of his mobile numbers) it all fell away to nothing. He was saying that he'd send someone round to me with the cash and a 12 car transporter (yes, really) and that we'd do the deal that way.

 

He claimed that he got money from a trust fund every year and that was why he had 24 cars. How this had gone from 42 (as previously asserted on Practical Classics) was not mentioned.

He said that I had to wait and that he'd been pissed around by someone who wanted to buy his FC3, and that he had to buy a Laurel back because his mate had found out it was to be banger raced.

 

I've not seen him on any forums since. Hirst expected him on OJC and we were thinking he might make an appearance on No Skool Just Cool, but nothing has been heard of him (thank Christ) since early January.

 

So I don't know (or care) what happened to him.

[Guest]

Post the pie chart Hirst!

[Rocket88]

As I've got to travel 86 zillion miles to look at anything in the UK, I always state when contacting the seller [if not known to me]that if said heap of shite is not as described, further negotiations will be taking place on my arrival on his doorstep! I get them to email me to that effect. No email, no deal. This has worked with both ebay and other stuff. If it's not "as described", tough shit.

[Father Ted]

I have genuinely had people try to offer me a swap some methadone against a Mk5 Escort. What bloody planet to these folk live on?

Esp when methadone retails at £10 / 100mls street, or £1.24/100mls pharmacy - its also not likely to get you off your tits like proper heroin / diamorphine will do. Interestingly (and not many people know this), Methadone was invented by the Nazis when the Allies cut off the opium supply to Germany during WWII - its a synthetic opiod that binds tightly to the Mu receptors in the brain and gut mimiking the analgesic effect of opium. It was not supposed to be addictive, but it is.Anyway, arse ache, ebay? The mongs that came out of the woodwork recently when I was selling my bike... FFS.

[AnthonyG]

Didn't Alistair on R-Rides have huge strife when selling a car on ebay? Threats of physical violence against him and his family, refunds wanted after the car was collected etcAfter that, dealing with window lickers seems a doddle

Yes the sorry saga involved a 1986 Chrysler New Yorker, a bit of a shed as I recall but Alistair had been totally honest and described it as such, and a bunch of random Eastern/Central european wannabe gangsters (surely real ones would have cloned/ringed late model Range Rover Sports)As others have indicated - any eastern european accent on the phone asking about 'car please' results in 'I'm sorry, it has been sold'. This may be 'racist', but born of bitter experience by many folk I know.

[Guest]

Post the pie chart Hirst!

 

Thus ends the SKOOOOOOL saga.

[Guest]

Post the pie chart Hirst!

Thus ends the SKOOOOOOL saga.

Thank God.Although TBH it pales into insignificance compared to what happened to Akku. Strewth.

[reallyloud]

RR is a wierd one, I've met some cracking guys from the forum in real life - at meets and shows, and when I first joined up I did my bit to encourage people to join. Its main problem now is that its become too big and far too busy for us old farts - some of the more interesting threads get lost within the day. The reality is that most of us are over 25 - younger members join up and come on with good but clueless intentions. And then the repetition of questions (lowering, banded steels, rat look, banger racing etc), questions about more modern cars (I still maintain that anything after 1984/ A reg is recent) and inability to add anything more to a crowded party.I think RR is still relevant, it has a great coverage over the web and whats happening (the blog in particular is quite good and well researched reading) and at the end of the day its trying to unite people with a love of cars. I listed a shagged Datsun Bluebird about 5 years ago. 70% of it was filler the rest consisted of lucas and poundshop parts, it was really only good for the oval. Unfortunately it didn't attract people who would make use of the car but I had contact with an endless list of dreamers and piss-takers.One guy from Bristol emailed me everyday over the 8 day auction, his ramblings consisted of tales of personal hardship, YTS schemes and the love of old japanese cars. He offered me £200 when he bid the car up to £260 and then followed it with 'can I pay in installments?' The icing on the cake was that he had yet to pass his test and needed the car to be stored for 3 months until he did. I got a internet developer friend to send his email account a virus and sold the car to a banger racer - who paid up and collected within 3 hours of contact.I also ebayed a tatty but solid and complete BMW 2002 touring - it had no tax or MOT, starting bid of £200. I didn't have the time to make the car presentable or legal, so I listed the car as is. Some bird and her brother from Luton turned up with a Shogun and trailer to see the car. Luton to Wallingford should only take 2 hours off peak, but somehow took them 5. I took pity on them and I reasoned with her after their epic journey and said I'll take it off ebay if you give me £300 now - it needed to go and that was a very reasonable price. She said she'd rather wait until the auction finished. I told her the car had 15 watchers, 2 were dead serious. Her brother said she should take it, seeing as they had hired the trailer already but she still said no and said 'I think I could get the car for its current £200'. Car sold for £360 to another bidder and all was fine - the winning bidder (incidently an irish snowboarder) organised a local mechanic to pick the car up and store it (at great expense) until he sorted out a pick up 2 weeks later. The Luton bird started sending me abusive emails about 'getting my mates' to bid on the car on my behalf and she accused me of being a con artist. I wrote a polite email essentially explaining how ebay worked and suggest she continued taking the medication and ECT treatment. I also sent her various ebay links for teapots, dolls and bread makers, and told her to stay away from things she doesn't understand. I also asked her not to contact me again or I'll go round and stamp on her pets.....I was livid with her barefaced cheek.I don't bother with selling on ebay anymore, I prefer to sell my cars to people I know - its worked out quite well so far. I have a feeling that ebay is conspiring with an open air mental asylum to stop the likes of us from selling, so traders and the Chinese can take over it completely.

[retrogeezer]

I still maintain that anything after 1984/ A reg is recent

Can't agree with that - 84 is now 25 years ago! The same as having a 1959 car in 1984 and that was pretty damn unusual! You were lucky to still have a mid 70's car in 1984.My opinion is really stuff older than 1990 ish is old but even they are coming up to 20 years old and a lot are now unusual to see, VX Mk2 Astras, Mk4 Escorts (even Mk5's!) Cavaliers, Bluebirds, Corollas - I could go on. Even my 'modern' 96 Mondeo is 13 years old.. and seeing as most people won't touch a car older than 5 years that feels old too.

[reallyloud]

Well, you're absolutely right - 25 year old cars are worth saving and coverting and no less interesting than some 70's relic, its just what I've got fixed in my demented mind - a bit like a mental classic car block. I'm getting old, I'm already fond of real ale and considering the virtues of indoor slippers.

[dollywobbler]

My god this place is a serious hangout for whinging old bastards - who I suspect are closer to 30 than 60. Is this why I fit in so well?!

[chaseracer]

My god this place is a serious hangout for whinging old bastards - who I suspect are closer to 30 than 60. Is this why I fit in so well?!

Sure is, Ian Works for me, too...

[Mr Lobster]

And me!I did wonder what happened over on RR. I only post occasionally but have a bit of a read most days and noticed how much bollocks Skool was posting. Certainly better without that sort and firtunately we don't seem bothered by them on here.

[Guest]

I'm 25.