Funny buyers

[sierraman]

Let's have your stories about the various nutcases and no hopers you've had turn up when you've sold a car?

[fordperv]

I tend not to sell cars but the one I have sold in the past few years was a silver mk1.5 focus 3 door 1.6, I popped it on gum tree for £350 with lots of pictures, anyway I get a call of a lad who wanted to see it, he turned up with his mrs, he looks around it and says what great condition it is etc etc but he wanted a black one, I laughed and said well it was definately silver in the pictures, he then went on to say hes seen a black 3 door with much higher mileage and not quite as good a condition for £795, i just laughed and wished him good luck, then a Romanian chap turned up and didn't quibble on price said its bloody cheap and took it away for his mrs.

[twosmoke300]

I had this lovely * mk6 escort for sale - no rust at all but the guy wouldn't buy it because it had Edinburgh number plates !

[lexi]

A guy turned up to view and possibly buy my old minty Landy.  He was a landy forum member and used to talk and advise on many aspects of the Marque with good knowledge and detail. In giving him a test drive, he could not steer a Ser11 landy. Neither could he stamp the brakes to stop it, or, change up gear on the thing, never mind do the difficult double de clutching on going down the box.

  He nearly ran into a parked car, at which point I yanked the hand brake and said "enough".  I had to stop the test drive and take over. A guru on a forum with tech, but one who hadn't actually driven the thing he waxed lyrical about. You never know what is at the other end of a computer really.

 

  In the end up, he did not buy it, admitting that he really just liked working on them??

[Mr_Bo11ox]

How can you even be competent to work on something if you can't test it out afterwards?

 

TBH if any vehicle would attract mentals of that calibre it's got to be old Land Rovers.

[Guest Hooli]

I had some loon bid on a car in Burton & drive up from London with tradeplates on a carrier bag. He then claimed he was buying it for a mate & couldn't afford the petrol home so I should give him some money off for fuel.

 

I suggested he paid up & pissed off, or just pissed off & the train station was that way...

[danthecapriman]

I was selling a BMW e36 316, had shit loads of calls and the first guy who turned up to have a look spent ages looking it over and checking it out. Asks to go on a test drive, to which I agree. We go out in it and he goes on a really long drive on all sorts of roads.

 

Get back and he says 'it's a bit too big!'

 

Could you not tell that when you A: looked at the pics of it in the advert

B: turned up and spent ages looking it over

 

Bell end!

[Tamworthbay]

When we sold my wife's Golf a very nice Polish guy turned up (and bought it), I asked if he wanted to see the engine, he replied yes so I opened up the bonnet. He took one quick look as if to say 'yup that's an engine' and dropped the bonnet. Made me laugh at the time and still does. Lovely bloke though and bought it no messing as has every Polish person I have had the pleasure to deal with, none of this tyre kicking arseing around nonsense.

[DodgeRover]

Selling a 20 year old Montesa trials bike privately, bloke turns up rides round the garden a few times then says he'll buy it if I put a warranty on it.....

 

Warranty when new was until you get it out if the shop unless you can prove a manufacturing defect.......

[mercrocker]

A bloke bought a Mk1 Granada off me once and paid me in 50p pieces.   Made him count them but they were all there!   

[Tamworthbay]

A bloke bought a Mk1 Granada off me once and paid me in 50p pieces.   Made him count them but they were all there!

 

Depends how long ago it was, he may only have needed to count to 7.

[DodgeRover]

A bloke bought a Mk1 Granada off me once and paid me in 50p pieces. Made him count them but they were all there!

When I was in the shop someone paid over a grand in pound coins....had to sit there and count them out - found 5 fakes I think

[Disco Fever]

Sold a Saab 9-5 2.3lpt estate on the bay about 8 years ago. I'm in Sutton Coldfield and the winner was from Bognor Regis. I was pretty dubious but this old boy with questionable waterworks made it up on the train via London. He paid up, had a cuppa and toilet break and headed off well pleased. Made him call me when he got home which he duly did.

[cobblers]

When I used to work with a mate of mine converting VWs to campers, this woman came with her husband to have a look round a van, we hadn't even finished it yet - They rang about a van we'd just sold, but said we had one nearly done if she wanted dibs.

 

She looked round it for about 15 minutes, I showed her how the bed pulled out and how the fridge worked etc etc but there were no front seats in, no bumpers on it and no windows in, just roughly cut out holes. I think the tailgate was still stoved in too.

 

She wanders off across the workshop and has a chat with her husband, then plods back over to us.

"Yes, I like it. We'll buy it! So how much is it?"

My mate wasn't really quick enough and had said "£8995" before he realised what was going on.

She fished a carrier bag out of her handbag that had atleast 20k of 1k bundles in and gave him 9 of them, then asked when it would be ready.

[Felly Magic]

Strangest I had was when I was selling a shagged C reg Samba Style with a rotten bonnet, delamiating windscreen and a kippered wheelbearing, the local ice cream man asked how much I wanted, it was worth about 34p, I said £250, which was £100 more than what I paid for it, he came the next day with a trailer and paid no quibbles, I did think that was quite surreal really, feck knows what he did with it

[blakey79]

I bought this as a stop gap, and in the week or so that I had it caused me no end of grief.

 

Stopped by the police for not having insurance, even though it was fully covered, just didn't show on the insurance database at midnight the same day I purchased it, car was towed away and locked up in a compound losing me a days work. After gaining all the relevant paperwork and showing this to the officer the next day, I then had to pay a hefty fine to release the car.

Anyhooo... I,advertised the car as needing work, it was a wee cracker actually, barring the bodywork which I attended to in a roundabout way.

The phone rings and they want to view the car there and then, no problems says I..

Father in law slates it, and proceeds to take it out for a test drive that frankly makes my ponder whether he has a licence, then confesses to not having driven a manual for 20 years..

Says that the clutch is iffy, and that the gearbox needs work, really please stop trying to pull the wool over my eyes. I grab the keys then walk off, and then as I'm opening the front door to my house, he proceeds to tell me we have a deal at asking price...

 

What a chancer, if I wasn't so short on parking spaces he would have been told,march on..

[maxpower]

I had 2 guys come down to buy a honda accord i was selling a few years ago... they said i should knock a bit off the price as they had travelled all the way down from leeds to london to see the car...

me being originally from scotland i told them that i had travelled all the way from glasgow to london to live here but didn't expect the council to reduce my rent for doing so

they paid full asking price and drove away..(no doubt muttering "tight cnut" under their breaths

[pauldoubleyou]

Sold an MG to a lad that had been standing for a year and I'd bought it cheap, out new carpet in it and then tested it and punted it. Lad drove it in a test drive like he stole it and promtly a spring snapped due to two of us in the back. He wanted £200 off it due to the busy spring, I gave him £50. He then sat outside for two hours thinking about it, realised it was SORN, waited another hour then paid and drove it away with no tax.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Hendry]

Have only ever sold 3 cars privately in my life, one was to my uncles mrs so no dramas there, the other was to a mechanic who took it a drive, said it was a good condition car with low miles and history (5 year old 206) and had little bad to say about the car and offered £3400 for it when id priced it at £3690, he was the first phone call, first viewer and bought it, an utter breeze.

 

The one which sticks in my mind was a P reg mk3 Golf 1.4 SE, id bought it from a guy who had bought it from a customer at the garage he worked at whod always taken it there for repairs, I only bought it as stop gap as id smashed my mk4 Astra and on TPFT insurance I had no courtesy car or anything, anyway it was a heap, I paid £350, taxed it for 6 months, ended up never driving it as some power steering hose came off and pished the fluid all over the road, I put it back on, topped it up with more fluid and it happened again, also itd had a new coil spring on the NSF but part of the old snapped one was still there so it was making an awful racket, there was no drivers door lock and the rear wiper arm was missing, it also had a rust hole on the drivers door shut, so I sacked it off and stuck it on gumtree, sold it to the first taker for £225, he asked what the "boddie" was like, which made me laugh, anyway he came and bought the POS with a pal, said it was for an old tightfisted guy that was in the same club as them (working mens club I think) and told me the old boy was the sort who since it had 6 months tax would spend the next 6 months saving up his glass irn bru bottles for the deposits to help pay for another 6 months tax when it was up, whether he was serious or not ive no idea but it made me laugh. 

 

Wish id swapped the plates off it though because they were pre-2001 Park's dealer plates which the car had had since 3 years old 

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Lovely black D reg Twin Plenum Vitesse in the Autotrader for £4995 in 90/91.

Lad , makes appointment to view, when he turns up he looks about 15 and got 4 mates with him, they arrived on foot from the bus stop.

I make it quite clear I think he's wasting my time and he's definitely not having a test drive, whereupon he takes an envelope out of his coat pocket stuffed with £50 notes. I'll have it if it does 140 mph he says.

From the passenger seat he thought he saw 150 complete with his 4 mates squashed in the back on the demo run on the A5. He handed over the full asking price and I made sure I filled in the logbook and sent it off recorded delivery that afternoon.

I never heard about a massive high speed accident involving child drug dealers in the paper and a couple of years later saw a picture of the car in Prctical Classics at a show ( where it had Developed by Lotus on the number plates- WTF?) so it seemed to survive.

[Junkman]

I had a Corvette dealership near Frankfurt mid 80s until early 90s.

You cannot possibly imagine the parade of clowns we had every day.

 

One that I will never forget was a genuine Dude, walking in dressed with bathing gown, swimming cap and flip flops.

So we dismissed him as a casual looker and I, as usual judging a book by its cover (I'm such a hypocrit), toyed with the idea to kick him out.

He target locked on a brand new Sebring Yellow convertible with Code 78 Saddle interior (I always ordered our showroom cars in striking combinations)

and asked me to prepare the purchase contract.

I said alright, but how do you want to pay?

He asked me, whether he could use my telephone to call his bank (this was before mobile phones).

I pushed him the phone, he dialled away, stated his name and asked the receptionist to put him through to his account manager.

The rest of the conversation was as follows:

 

Good morning Herr (name of account manager), I just bought a car and now need to pay for it.

[...]

90,000 Marks.

[...]

Yes, but that's only my business account, so it must be overdrawn.

[...]

You gotta be kidding me. Three days????

[...]

Two??? Oh shit. Is there nothing else we could do, I mean, you could at least give me a chance to...

[...]

 

 

All the while I was kind of innerly laughing my arse off at that hopeless poser,

when he suddenly put his hand on the speaker bit and said to me:

 

Would it be acceptable for you if the dosh were in your account by tomorrow afternoon?

[timolloyd]

I've had a couple of long distance sales which I was a bit nervous about.

 

Sold my Spitfire to a guy who said he was flying from Dublin to collect it and drive back. This was a car that had fought me every mile of any motorway journey, mainly due to a knackered distributor, so I made it clear that I hadn't ever driven it for long distances.

 

I collected him from Gatwick, took him to see the car, he smoked a fag, thought about it, chipped me £100 and drove it home. I received an email 2 days later saying he'd driven it approx 500 miles home to the West Coast and it was 'perfect'.

 

More recently I sold my Jag X308 to a guy who flew down from Scotland and drove it away to his home...on the Isle of Skye. Again, no bother at all.

 

Neither of these cars were particularly pricey, but now I know Autoshite and the distances people will travel for the right* cheap car

[Flat4]

Neither of these cars were particularly pricey, but now I know Autoshite and the distances people will travel for the right* cheap car

 

 

 

You hit the nail on the head there. I've had a couple of long-distance purchases myself, the latest one a Granvia from Devon and I live on the Ayrshire coast. Unfortunately due to various circumstances, I couldn't collect that one myself but really wished I had because it's a comfy big bus on a cruise.

 

I was, however, planning to get a Megabus down to the South coast a few years back, can't remember exactly where, suspect it was Portsmouth or Plymouth area, it was to buy an Audi A4 2.8 V6 Quattro which if memory serves me correctly was purple. It was to replace my dog of a Legacy GT twin turbo which I utterly adored, the biggest fun in any car I've ever had, but it needed like 10-12 hours of work to get through an MOT, the body work needed attention and by that point I'd realised there was better out there. At the time, all the twin turbos I'd seen were over a grand and that was all I had to spend on a new car, including getting it home. So meantime, this Audi seemed like a suitable compromise as it's still a pretty quick motor with plenty of torque, and I like torque more than I like BHP tbh. Sure I'd seen it on some motoring forum or other and was almost dead cert on it but the night I went to get the Megabus, the overnight service from Glasgow to London, I was delayed getting to Glasgow because of a breakdown on the motorway from my, relatively small, home town about 30 mins drive away. I made it on time for the bus but I then learned why they say to arrive 10 mins early for it as it turns out they had over-booked it and I couldn't get on!

 

So inbetween me getting in touch with the seller to arrange another day to collect the Audi, and actually getting on the bus, I keep browsing eBay, Gumtree, Autotrader, etc just in case anything more local appears which will quench my thirst for both torque and speed. And then The Fury appears.....the week before I booked my bus tickets for the Audi, this gorgeous blue Legacy GT with gold wheels and ridiculous Scooby Doo graphics appears on Gumtree for something like 2 grand. When I saw it at first I said something like, if only that were half price I'd buy it tomorrow. I'll bet you can guess what happened next.....while I'm waiting for my bus, the same car appears back on Gumtree at £850. I phone the seller and ask if it's still available, he says yes but he's had lots of intrest. I ask if he would mind hanging on to it for me while I check if I can change my train ticket from London to Portsmouth, or where ever it was, to London to Southend on Sea. Turns out it was only going to cost me about £20-30 to change them so I ring him back, he sounds surprised that I have and I say OK, if you'll hang on to it for me til tomorrow, I'll get the Megabus down from Glasgow at 4am, get into London early afternoon, then get the train down to yours, if you wouldn't mind collecting me from the station. Amazingly, he agrees. The journey down was ridiculous, bus driver had to pull over and stop as his wind screen wiper snapped and it was chucking it down rain, the bus ended up absolutely rammed full and I was late for every single train connection so I had to pay over the odds for new tickets. Thankfully Megabus eventually refunded me for those but it only left me with an hour of daylight to look over the car and test drive it. I could find absolutely NOTHING wrong with it mechanically,, except the driver's window regulator was shagged so it didn't go up all the way and the tyres were mismatched, which on a Subaru is an absolute no-no coz their diffs are the one part that aren't bomb-proof. But alas, I'd come all that way and I couldn't talk the seller down on price, first time I'd ever paid full whack for a car but he said he was being offered a grand left right and centre for it, but he kept it for me as I was on the way.

 

I drove back to Glasgow absolutely freezing and getting soaked to the skin because the window wouldn't wind up but with the biggest grin on my face on an empty M6 toll road, testing to see if the 112mph limiter had been removed when the speedo was converted to mph.....    To this day, it's still the best car I've ever owned, the best car I've ever driven, it still feels as tight as a drum even at 22, 23 years old. It turned out I have also bought myself an appreciating classic as what I have is not just any GT, not just any twin turbo, it's a limited edition GT-V with a short ratio STI gear box. Subaru only ever made 2000 of them in 1995 and 1996 to commemorate them winning the WRC, and I've been lucky enough to have 2 of them. My mechanic also had an auto one, and I sold my other one as it was getting very long in the tooth, mileage wise and too fragile to use as a daily drive. It had already had the centre diff replaced by the previous owner, then the front diff started failing and when I sold it, I believe it had the early stages of head gasket failure. Still drove OK but I checked the MOT history and it failed on brakes, emissions and an overheating engine.... I now use a slightly later model GTB as my daily drive because once you have 2 turbos, nothing else really compares but none of them have felt as good to drive as The Fury. He was worth every hour on the road to bring him home and I can't see me ever selling him, even if the head gasket did go on him. There are some cars that are worth more than money.

[anonymous user]

Absolute idiot, turned up had a look at the car (an old Lotus 7), didn't even hear it run. Agreed to buy it subject to a new MOT, back a week later with cash, could only just fit in it to drive (after removing his shoes and the seat cushion). Drove away with a big smile.

 

Did I mention that I was the idiot?

[Cleon-Fonte]

Prospective buyers sometimes actually turn up to buy cars?

 

I'm shocked.

[bramz7]

Remember that tidy blue ZX I had as my first car? Well when my old relationship turned sour, it had to go. I had no end of phonecalls from this absolute freak telling me how good it was and how I shouldn't let it go for nothing, yet he never once offered me any money.

[MikeR]

3 of my cars have been scrapped over the years , and the rest went to a dealer , cant be arsed with knob heads and wheel kickers any more when it comes to selling .

[Tamworthbay]

Remember that tidy blue ZX I had as my first car? Well when my old relationship turned sour, it had to go. I had no end of phonecalls from this absolute freak telling me how good it was and how I shouldn't let it go for nothing, yet he never once offered me any money.

Funny how people will tell you what a bargain it is/ you sold it too cheap but never make an offer.

[nacho man]

I sold a zxr750 on ebay a good few years back.

 

The guy caught the train up from London one night, he got to mine about ten, it was proper pissing it down, I told him to ring me when he got to the station so I could pick him up, he didn't, he got a taxi to my door from the station as he didn't want to bother me.

 

I felt sorry for him as it was a proper shitty night, he just had a helmet, a hoody and his jeans on.

 

He didn't even look at the bike, he paid the cash and was like I best get going then, opened the garage up, and he rode off.

 

Either a madman or a hero.

[Aston Martin]

I refused to buy a car because it's number plate ended in EDL.