This is another edition of the Car Nut Ball that’s me. If you read last month’s article, you know all about my ‘57 Ford Ranch Wagon that sold in March at the Mecum Auction in Glendale. I let it go at half of the reserve price, but it needed to leave my life. The financial hit is another thing though, so I decided to see if I could flip some vehicles to lessen the financial pain. I spend time each morning searching on Craigslist and have a pretty good idea on price values of the older cars and trucks. One vehicle that stood out as pretty popular were 1988 to 1995 GM short-bed pickups. The prices for them were usually fairly high, especially for nice ones and low-mileage ones. So, that became the truck I would search for at a lower than normal price. Absolutely nothing stood out in the local areas or even around the region. After several days of searching, I found a 1989 GMC lifted 4×4 short-bed with only 115,000 miles in far northern California. The photos looked pretty good and I negotiated the price that we both agreed to and he also agreed not to sell it before I got there to pick it up. The trip with my open car trailer took around 38 hours round trip including about four hours of sleep time in the back of my Chevy van. Luckily the truck was as described and we did our deal. Bottom line, with very little cleaning and spiffing, I sold the truck in less than 7 days for a nice profit. So, again the search for a nice short-bed GM pickup began. This time the good deal truck was near Salem Oregon in a small town called Independence. I’m originally from Oregon, but had never heard of this town, so figured it must be pretty small. Again, I negotiated the same travel and price agreement, and off I went. This red truck was much nicer than the blue GMC and I had to pay $3500 more to buy it, plus the travel expense was a lot more too. As it turned out, the truck was nicer than I expected. The owner had removed the original wheel arches because they were dull and faded, but he still had them and they came home with me. This round trip adventure took well over 48 hours. Once home, the only thing I did was sand and paint those wheel arches and reinstall them which looked great. The interior only needed a good vacuum, but the exterior roof had some scratches and bad paint spots where a roof-mounted custom visor had been mounted near the windshield. I made a quick call to Space Age Paint (480-835-0971) in Mesa and ordered a spray can of color code red paint. I did my sanding and prep, then used the whole can, which looked great and matched up really nicely. Next I washed and buffed out the exterior and the truck was ready to sell. There is RISK when buying a vehicle out of state, especially when it’s so far away like let’s say Independence Oregon. The sellers were very nice and signed the title in front of me, everything looked fine. Fine, until I went to the DMV to switch the title over to Arizona. The Oregon title had their company name and the owner’s name, which she signed. The DMV said sorry, she needed to also sign on line #2 and say Owner. Remember, I’m the Car Nut Ball willing to drive 2800 miles round trip to buy a vehicle. I found their phone and after several calls, she answered but said they were on a camping vacation. At about the same time, I had found a 1965 Mustang in New Mexico and was talking to the owner about a possible trade, truck for Mustang plus some cash to me. When I found out about the title problem and explained it to him. I was sure the deal was dead. But, as it turned out he checked with the New Mexico DMV who said no problem the one signature is OK. So, we negotiated our deal and agreed to meet halfway in Holbrook, AZ. We literally got there within 10 minutes of each other. He loved the truck, I loved the Mustang. Now, my Car Nut Ball brain likes the Mustang so much, I have to decide, keep it and sell my ‘78 Nova or just spiff it up and sell for another nice profit to help offset the ‘57 Ford losses. BTW, those two long road trips went great, but how many more should I risk, that title problem could have been really bad.
