What’s the Straight Dope on this? I need a car soon, but I don’t feel comfortable buying or leasing something new at this point in my life.
Since I wrecked the Saturn I’ve been taking the Metro. But getting up at 4am and getting home around 7pm 5 or 6 days a week is getting really old, really quick. My sanity is hanging by a thread. I’m about thisclose from fixing up my FiL’s old Thunderbird (since he offered), which would probably cost me about a bajillion dollars in gas to get to work, plus my cow-orkers will laugh at me. Unfortunately FrankenCar cannot make the trip to work, and in fact it can barely make it to the Metro station.
So anyone ever picked up something really cheap for quick from an auction? Got some advice? Anecdotes? Scary stories?
I have. My current car is from an auction. You won’t get really cheap because there is always big competition from many used car dealers that use those as a method to stock their lots.
I wrecked my BMW and I needed a car fast. My FIL’s cousin is a part-time car dealer. He met me at auction day and I had two hours to scan the lot of many hundreds of cars. I picked an Isuzu Rodeo with low miles and gave him a maximum bid (this auction was a huge one but only directly open to dealers). He went in and went slightly over my bid and won. I had to pay him a $500 fee much to the admonishment of family. I saved a good deal of money and although it isn’t the greatest SUV, it has done fairly well two years later.
My FIL buys cars at state auctions all the time. He specializes in flipping the really shitty ones. You can save money but you really need to know the true dealer value of the car and be firmly aware of stopping at a given point. It is like a stock exchange so the likelihood of hoodwinking many professionals in next to zero but you get close to dealer pricing. On the downside, you really need to know what you are doing. You only have a short time to assess the cars and you absolutely have to be prepared to walk away with nothing that day unless you want to be screwed. There are many amateurs that bid up prices at an auction well beyond their worth.
I got my car at an auction. This was in 1998, and it is a black 1996 Honda Civic hatchback. It had been repossessed from its previous owner by a credit union, and had a nasty dent in the front passenger side. Aside from that, it looked pretty good, but I had no way to check it out in advance or discern any flaws. I just got a tip that this car was coming up for auction, bid on it, and got really lucky. It had 27,000 miles on it at the time, and I’ve got it up to 110,000 as of now. Aside from one expensive repair in 2004, it has been a great car, and it’s saved my life more than once.
I think every car I’ve ever owned was from an auction. I’ve delt with public and dealer auctions (uncle is a dealer so i get snuck in). I think the biggest thing to watch out for, other than going over the actual value of the car, are the little things wrong with the majority of the vehicles. A lot of the cars at an auction, from what i’ve experienced, have something wrong with them that you don’t notice until it’s too late. For example, the 94 lincoln that i got had leaked all the greese out of the rear end, but nothing bad happened to it until a week later when the bearings jammed. The 89 Bonneville SSE i got looked great, had low miles, and sounded just fine…until a couple weeks later when a mysterious issue came up that caused the car to die for absolutley no reason and not re-start for time equal to twice what you just spent driving, never did get that fixed, and i had to drive that POS in rush hour. Maybe i just have horrible luck with cars though.
Anyway, if you’re engine savvy and can fix oddball car problems you’ll still probably come out cheaper then if you went right through a dealer, just be careful.
You might check the police/sherriff auctions in your area. A friend of mine has bought several cars there and paid next to nothing for them. Of course, some of the cars up for sale aren’t exactly the nicest looking things (unless you’re into “pimp-mobiles”), but it might be cheaper than a dealer auction.
Yup. Worst mistake I ever made. It was a Mercury Sable, I forget what year. Late eighties (this was in the late nineties). I was in highschool and my friends and I would genuinely hope everytime we got in my car that we’d make it to our chosen destination. More often than not, we didn’t. I only had the piece of shit for 6 months before I totaled it, and was actually relieved to crash the POS. I bought it for 1400 and in the 6 months I owned it, I easily put as much, if not more, into repairs. Everything that could’ve got wrong with it, did.
I can honestly say Auctions are pretty bad for the regular folk. When I was in my early 20s I worked in a Days Inn. We had a car auction every Tuesday. Did they auction off cars at good rates? You bet. Did ordinary Joes win? Nope
Why?
Because basically every Monday night our hotel was sold out to car dealers. Because we had a gigantic lot they would park their trucks. You know the kind that can carry cars on the lot and go to the auction. I was in Milwaukee, and the car dealer came from as far south as Alabama and as far west as Omaha
And if their was any decent car for auction the dealers would bid it up to the point where it made no economic sense to big higher for a regular schmoe
Tuckerfan has some good advice - I know of several people who have purchased their vehicles from municipal auctions - squad cars that are now out of service to be exact - and it worked out very very well for all of them.
In additon to dealers being in the know, there is probably some shilling going on. Also, it is mostly dealers selling the cars, so you need to ask why they are selling the to other dealers at wholsale rather than to Joe Schmoe at retail.
I have had good luck with a repo’d truck I bought from a Credit Union (sealed bid auction).
On the whole, Id much rather buy a used car from an individual though. Especially if they have maintainance records. Speaking of which, if you have the VIN, Ford dealers at least will run the dealer maintainance history on a prospective used car for a small fee. I did that, and had the front end checked (I could feel the alignment was off, but wanted to verify nothing was damaged) before I bought the above CU truck.
When my boyfriend and I lived in Boston many years ago we got a Posche 924 through silent auction of confiscated DEA vehicles. It cost $5,000 and was a beauty that ran great. The interesting thing was the 4 hidden compartments built into the rear of the car.
Not quite an auction, but certainly worth a look, Insurance Reclamation lots are everywhere. I bought a 96 fully loaded Ford Ranger in 98 for 4500. It wasn’t pretty, the body was banged up pretty good. But with the luck of a DHL truck with bad brakes, and a little auto knowledge of my own, it soon looked like new (The DHL truck rear ended me, and settled for enough to get a new bed, bumber, taillights, an air compressor, sprayer, and several quarts of auto paint). It lasted me 8 years.
I have bought and sold several cars at a local auto auction. This particular auction house is open to dealers and the public. They have been in business for over 25 years. My experiences have been:
paid $900 for a Chevy Spectrum, about 10 years old. I drove the car for 2 years and then sold it at the same auction for $700. In the interim I had to put in a clutch and deal with some strange wiring issues brought on by a previous owner who had no clue. Overall a big win.
paid $1950 for a Olds Cutlass Cierra with 250,000 miles on the odometer. Yep, a quarter million miles. It was well maintained and ran great on the lot, so I took a chance. This turned out to be one of the best cars I ever owned. I put another 100,000 miles on it before it died (timing chain). I figured that car cost me less than 15 cents per mile to drive, including purchase price, gas, oil, tires and repairs. Huge win.
paid $750 for a 12 year old Pontiac Grand Prix. This one turned out to have a bent cam shaft. I drove it (noisily) for 2 weeks and sold it to a junk yard for $100. Big loss, but avoidable. See, I had looked at a red Grand Prix in the lot before the auction. It ran good and looked to be well maintained so I made a note to bid on it when it came through. I was only half paying attention to the auction when I noticed a red Grand Prix in the far auction lane. I went over, joined the bidding and won the car. Only it was a different red Grand Prix than the one I had noted. Same year, same color, everything. Had I been paying attention to the lot numbers I would have avoided that mistake.
