What was the first car you ever purchased on an E bay Auction?

[Six-cylinder]

What was the first car you ever purchased on an E bay Auction?

Chatting with Andyrew today he told me the story of his first E bay car purchase, which set me thinking about most of us will have had a first E bay purchase to tell a tale about.

Mine was in Nov 2003 when I won a 1982 BMW 525i Manual bought for just £40 with a weeks MOT left and little chance of getting another. I bought it to drive around my friends farm, but drove it home from Ringwood 110 miles in the company of my friend driving a E34 BMW 530i Auto! My 525i manual went like the wind, shame it rattled my teeth when braking!

[HMC]

2007. 1984 metro vp500 number 365. £300

 

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

'92 polo breadvan. About 15 years ago.

Was being sold with 'massive oil leak' or something like that in the description. Needless to say, I got it cheap chucking a last millisecond bid in. 1 cam seal later, it was good as gold and went on to be one of my favourite cars I've ever had.

 

Sold to some oikes with short MOT and sadly never saw the road again, RIP M9

[outlaw118]

Moose 1 V40 T4, went to somewhere near Nottingham for her, can't remember how much I paid, but remember being disappointed that it didn't have a CD player as advertised, impressed at how quick it was, and how utterly shit the brakes were.

Was pretty annoyed when the V5 came through showing her to have been previously written off....

 

[Crispian_J_Hotson]

Yeah, those panel gaps are a bit naughty...

[outlaw118]

2 minutes ago, Crispian_J_Hotson said:

Yeah, those panel gaps are a bit naughty

Rear door always was a bitch to shut......

[sutty2006]

Similar to you. 
 

2006/7 I bought a 518i shark nose on a D plate for £107. It was mint apart from the smell of curry inside. Changed the whole interior but it still smelt of curry powder. Used for 2007 scally rally. Then got ebayed off. Did have a picture but can’t find it. 

[Jazoli]

Mine was a blue Talbot samba like this for £262 a very very long time ago

I bought it as my other car (a tuned 200SX) was no good as a winter car up here in the wilds, I may have scrapped the Samba the following year as it needed tyres and a backbox, there was nothing wrong with it

[Cooper1]

Ford mundano 2.0 Ghia got it for £150? 

Had it a week  

Parted it out due to knackerd injectors and bust DMF  

 

 

 

 

[sutty2006]

5 minutes ago, Cooper1 said:

Ford mundano 2.0 Ghia got it for £150? 

Had it a week  

Parted it out due to knackerd injectors and bust DMF  

 

 

 

 

Recaros out of a 220. Lush. 

[LightBulbFun]

Ummm, does this count as a car? a trailer made from what was once an AC Model 64 Electric invalid tricycle for £37!  

 

otherwise the first thing (but not a car) I ever bought from ebay was a Case of 6 Canadian Sylvania 4ft 40W T12 Red coloured fluorescent tubes back when i was 4!

(I dont have any left sadly the tubes suffered from ring off, a condition where the flame settings on the machine that seal the stem into the tube is set wrong, and it causes a stress in the glass eventually causing it to crack off, its a lamp makers worst nightmare as it can effect many thousands of tubes/lamps)

[Cooper1]

3 minutes ago, sutty2006 said:

Recaros out of a 220. Lush. 

They were very comfortable.. 

 

I'd of kept the car if i had done my homework before buying, if i did i'd of known a set of injectors for a TDCI MK3 is over a grand!!   

 

Live and learn though LOL

[wuvvum]

1959 Standard Ten, from a chap in Saffron Walden back in 2003.  It was quite rough but only £150.  Took me a while to organise a trailer so I drove down in the Hillman Hunter Topaz that was my daily at the time to pay for it, then went back a few weeks later with a Volvo and trailer to collect.  Never did get it back on the road.

[Shep Shepherd]

E526 BAO, a very badly-described 1988 Volvo 240 GL saloon, which I bought in December 2002 from a dodgy bloke from Eastleigh. The bodywork was terminally fucked, as it had lived on the Cumbrian coast for most of its life, so I got rid of it pretty quickly. Good job I only paid £200 for it:

If I recall correctly, I had to pay the scrapman to take it away...

A year later, I had another go at buying a car from eBay and ended up with The Volvo 

[brownnova]

Mine was a 1979 Dolomite!

I bought this sight unseen off eBay in about 2005/6. I paid £360 for it. I was in work when the auction ended and didn’t believe I would win it so I got my then girlfriend to place the final bid for me! We then got the train down to Redditch from Bangor in a bank holiday Monday to collect it. Getting insurance was a nightmare as everyone was closed! But I managed it in the end.

 Id never driven a car with a manual choke before, so I put that in way too early and nearly died on a roundabout, then once I got it to a pez station water started pouring out of the boot! An alarmed passer by thought it was petrol!

 In the end after the slightly iffy start we got home with relative ease.

I later sold it to a man from Birmingham, who then sold it to Practical Classics magazine.

 Now JLO sports an  MX5 engine and gearbox. 

She was for sale again recently... I wish I’d had the readies! 

[BL Bloke]

Mine was a lot more recent than those mentioned so far as it was the Rover 45 I bought last year for £370. Low mileage (31K) and full history. The engine was described as tappety (it is) and the airbag light was on. What the advert didn't mention was the fact that it was losing coolant which I only found out about a few days after I bought it. ? Since I bought the Saxo last August it's been sitting on the drive waiting for me to decide what to do with it.

DSCF0090 by timothy jones, on Flickr

DSCF0614 by timothy jones, on Flickr

I'd like to get it back on the road and sorted out properly but one of my other cars will have to go first. 

[rantingYoof]

2005, I was just about to turn 19, and my dad thought no harm would come of submitting a cheeky bid...

The engine was great (obvs), but everything structural was absolutely fucking fucked m9. You could hear bits of car fall out as you want over speed bumps.

Good thing I only had it a month, or it would have killed me pretty swifty, me being a talentless teenager who was addicted to the stainless steel exhaust system, and it being November.

[Joey spud]

This Standard 10 back in 2010 was my first and probably worst purchase.

I sold it on at a loss to a guy from up north who collected it with a Ford Probe towing a rickety caravan chassied car trailer. 

[Dannyk]

This, a 1.2 expression. 40k FSH 2 owners (grandad and then grandson for a year) for £400. In I think late 2007.

[St.Jude]

At 32 years old, and having been using eBay since 2004 when I was 16, I have yet to pop the car buying eBay cherry.

[Spiny Norman]

I'd bought a couple of cars from classified ads or as BIN/best offer on ebay before this one but had treated the transaction purely as going to view a secondhand car which I then bought on the spot.

This was the first one I won in an actual bidding frenzy. I say frenzy. I had a few beers one night, spotted this and thought, 'Oh, I used to have one of those, that looks smart', and stuck in a low ball bid which I never imagined would result in me waking up to the email the next morning telling me I'd won it.

Wonderful cars, shame they nearly all dissolved.

[TrabbieRonnie]

First eBay car, in 2009...

 

'Rosie' (so named for having being bought in the beautiful northern metropolis of Rosemarkie), I didn't have a clue what a Trabi was but knew I wanted one!  Drove up there (in the Liteace, sneaking into shot above... really miss that one), not knowing where I was going but spotted a similiarly lost-looking blue 2CV a couple of times on the way...  After many wrong turns, I find myself at the right house with a blue 2CV parked outside!  Turns out the Polish driver of said French fancy was also there to view MY Trabant...  Cue a very awkward 2-person viewing (in the dark, obvs), at the end of which the Polish guy pronounced it a 'shit car', before disappearing.

Rather than heed this potential warning, or even beating the guy down a bit, I slapped the £400 asking price into the his hands and floated home, a happy man!  He delivered her a week later, and she popped, spluttered and gassed her way into my affections immediately. 

After getting her done up a bit...

 

...this happened...

 

 

And then I obviously needed a matching caravan...

 

So basically, yeah... I blame eBay!

 

Latest eBay purchase is far more West German...!

 

 

[egg]

I joined eBay in 2001, and sold my first car on there in 2004. My Fiat Uno which had a few month's test for.....£92.

But it wasn't until 2016 that I actually won an auction car, when I bought my Mondeo for £215. I believe Wuv posted it up with a couple of hours to go as is his wont, and one bid won it. Well, it's been four years now, and it will probably never leave.

Pics from the eBay ad. 

In fact here is the exact moment it came into my life 4:41pm - 31/1/16..

 

[danthecapriman]

Mine was CRL 99V, a 79 Volvo 244 DL. It must have been about 2004ish I bought it from a guy in Hemel Hempstead. I went to collect it in my 91 Volvo 340 with my dad. I think he drove the 340 home and I drove the 244 with it’s glorious blue interior! I loved it! 

I bought it in about October time as I wanted something built like a tank to use through winter to keep my Capri off the salty shitty roads. A job it did very well. I kept it for another 5 years I liked it so much. After I sold it it was plate raped but it did get a load of bodywork and new paint before going off to live in Scotland (shocker!!). As far as I know it’s still going.

 

[Tadhg Tiogar]

The Mistress came indirectly from eBay. "Indirectly" because bidding failed to meet the reserve, so I requested a viewing. Before long, I had gone up there, haggled, and brought her back.

Like all mistresses, she has been quite high-maintenance since then....

[NorfolkNWeigh]

2004, I bought a Renault 5 Monaco for £87.00 from a guy in Oxford. I only wanted it for the leather and alloys for my oldest’s Renault 5 Campus . It was a non runner, cant remember what was wrong with it as a 1.7 engine was of no use for a 17 year old. I picked it up with a borrowed farm trailer towed behind Mrs N’s V8 Disco, I didn’t have any ramps so took a couple of scaffold boards, one of which broke loading it in the middle of Oxford, luckily I was blocking the road so drivers from the queue helped me lift the back end on!

I sold a caravan on there at about the same time, but I don’t think I’ve bought a car from eBay since. Sold a few but always as a classified, buy it now or best offer type advert.

Not the actual car, but it was as clean, what a waste.

[Doctormop]

Quote

MG Midget GHD 499S bought in 2001 for £500 unseen from a bloke in Swadlincote, Got a train down from Cumbria for £37.89 (Yes trains were expensive then)  Seller who was a top bloke, Met me at Burton on Trent Railway Station;  Drove me back to his, Paperwork done, money changed hands, several cups of tea and I was on my way home Happy,

Things seemed simpler in those days.

 

[hairnet]

the last time i bought a car from this country for myself

ebay hadnt been invented

bought the C4 for the old git from a classified ad off ebay from a bombsite dealer tho

 

[trigger]

No photos sadly but I think it was back in 2004 and was a L reg Peugeot 306 1.9 XLD in white, I won it for around £700 and it was in Southend, I remember driving down and meeting the chap in the sea life centre car park, it had the front fog light bumper of a XSi and remote locking which I thought was pretty exciting at the time. 

It lasted a good year as a work hack and was even rear ended at one point on the A14 by a Fiesta before being sold to someone at work for £600. I think the inevitable XUD head gasket failure killed it in the end. 

It was a bloody good car to be fair! 

[Ghosty]

My 740GLE was. 

Untitled by max_burton, on Flickr

 

It was up on an auction for £800 starting bid, it kept being relisted and after the third time I arranged a viewing and bought it for £650, I don't think the chap selling it knew how eBay auctions worked. Was a great car - utterly flawless and a joy to work on, but younger jobless me couldn't hack the running costs. I'd have it back in a heartbeat.

I'm planning to get back in a classic Volvo this year (hopefully a 240 but a flatface 740 would be alright), as a companion to the C30.