Perhaps one of the biggest financial mistakes I have made in my life was buying a Porsche 944 Turbo from a private party on eBay. I don’t recall why I got so fixated on this car, but I got caught up in auction frenzy and won it, paying more than I should have without ever having driven another of its type or looking carefully at the local market. Those were my mistakes.
But that said, I did everything necessary to protect myself from being ripped off in the transaction, and that wasn’t the problem. We used an escrow service, so I was able to take delivery and have my local mechanic look over the car before my payment was released to the seller. (I don’t recall what the arrangement was in the case I didn’t accept the car, whether the seller or I would have had to pay for the shipping.) There was a cosmetic blemish that the seller had disclosed, and provided pictures of, and my mechanic said it was in good condition. The biggest issue with the transporting was that it was on the lower level of the car carrier, and the car above dropped a bunch of oil on the roof of my car. But that was fairly easily cleaned off.
The mechanic – whom I trusted – okayed the car, but because it was a 17-year-old car and I had bought it to drive on the track, things started breaking pretty quickly, and it ended up costing me a lot of money and trouble over the next year. I ended up selling it for less than half what I paid for it.
But as bad as all that sounds, the process of buying a car remotely, transporting it, having it checked out, and releasing the funds went exactly as it should have. All the problems arose from mistakes I made: not being more diligent about local sales, overpaying in the auction, expecting an older car to hold up under heavy track use, etc. But I was young and callow (45).
At least now I can wear my Porsche jackets without being a phony.