Hammer Time: Unwrapping Presents

Steven Lang
by Steven Lang

Christmas 2010. Baseball cards have been replaced with Pokemon cards. An Army knife that could have made my mom faint back when, is now part of my son’s Boy Scouts arsenal. We even did a scavenger hunt for their last present. Which lead to a ‘paper guitar’ that I know has more computing power than my old Colecovision. Here I am counting my blessings while pecking away in an ‘open’ office where I get to hear and see everything. The kids have their games. The wife has enough wine for 2011, and my gas and electric bill was less than $100 for two months straight. What can I say, life is good. I also got me a present.

Isn’t she a brute! I saw her huddled up in a corner at a Carmax sale. Milldew remnants on the front fender and roof. Scratches on the derriere. You turn that simple metal key and… nothing. For some reason (ok, profit) I have always looked at these monstrous mastodons known as Roadmaster. The wagons get all the attention one can muster by having 60+ dealers look at the very same vehicle at the very same time. I never get them cheap at the Carmax auctions.

This particular Carmax auction also happens to be a ‘one lane sale’ which means that prices will be high and opportunities will be thin. I never buy the ‘finance fodder’ here because at these sales, it usually is a battle for who has the best finance customers. But not all cars here fit the dealer’s aspiring 75 a week / 60 month mold. By this measure alone, an 18 year old Shamu with a vinyl roof is one unloved bastard. Only the Scrooges and cash dealers love these cars. Thank God! Because when I opened the hood I found some surprisingly wonderful presents.

Recent belts. New fluids. A shiny new alternator. Heck even one of those Platinum Diehard batteries which usually outlasts most presidencies. The front grille had nary a nick on it and the headlights were surprisingly clear. This one already had promise.

The interior? Wow talk about your time warp! The seats were cushy thick leather made out of the best cows and chemicals GM offered to the AARP’s of the Clinton Era. The radio was factory original. Cassette tape and all. The dashboard and door panels were even without the usual cracks, rips, and the proverbial missing buttons.

This one fit the mold of the ‘garage queen’. GM managed to have the cheapest plastics this side of a Chrysler during the early 1990’s and unfortunately, even their luxury cars found themselves with parts bin materials that didn’t last. A Lexus this was not but the owner definitely kept it up and it was all there.

It was early that day. So I got a chance to look at the trunk and undercarriage along with the tires, exterior door panels, and the various areas of the car where water and rust can kill from within. This was a garage kept car that was loved. No cheap modifications. A few dents were a given and the tires were tweeners (not Michelins, not Walmarts). Not a showhorse. Not a workhorse. It hadn’t been ‘put out wet’ by the prior owner.

I also get to sales early so the bird dogs can’t bother me as much. This gives me time to find a few details about the vehicles as well. Carmax has buyers who appraise dozens of vehicles every week before they’re traded in. As part of that process they can give you a brief synopsis on their condition.

I find out from one of the buyers that they ‘think’ it’s a starter. ‘Think’ is a very relative term in the auction business. As in, “I think it has at least one thing wrong with it.” The Roadmaster was scheduled to run at another auction in Atlanta, but the car never made it to the barn. Whenever this happen the car in question is automatically moved to another auction so that dealers can’t sabotage cars before the sale and buy them for cheap. Fuse pullers and other ‘witch doctors’ are endemic in this business and this minimizes their gains. I talk to another guy who is the equivalent of a lot manager and he re-confirms the need to hammer the starter repeatedly.

I’ve bought perhaps a dozen inops from Carmax over the years and every one of them worked out. So did this one. I ‘held’ the bid at $500 while two other dealers were flashing 2 and 3 fingers to the auctioneer. Whispering the bid to the auctioneer before the sale and hanging out a good distance enabled this to work.

Carmax doesn’t allow you to work on site due to insurance purposes. So I get it towed for $50 to my place and order a $30 starter. 24 hours later the car sounds, symphonic. I start the car after installing the starter and giving the Diehard a slow trickle charge. Perfect. No smoke. No worries. The car glides down the road. Everything works… except the odometer which seems to be recording one mile for every five driven. Oh well. I bring it back to the lot and within a few hours one of my longtime customers is already yearning for a full-sized car after his refund check comes in. He will be one of many I will talk to between now and tax time.

In the meantime it will be rented out. $105 a week and it may very well be paid off before it finally leaves the lot for good. Am I tempting fate by doing this? Always, but every smart operator has a calculated risk. A car whose siblings used to be cop cars and taxi cabs will usually ‘make the note’ and give you minimal . Even if it is an old brute.

Steven Lang
Steven Lang

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  • Jedchev Jedchev on Dec 29, 2010

    You must own quite a car to rent this beauty out. Good luck on it anyway. It's the best GM product of the 90's and yes, they did care about these cars more than the rest of the fleet. They were also assembled in Arlington, TX, which is the best GM factory. My LT-1 Brougham is going strong at 137k and it has ruined me for any other car. It has the perfect combination of power, gas mileage for the size and ride. The Panther Fords are nearly unbearable after driving one of these GM B or D bodies. I don't know about the Roadmaster, but my Fleetwood has the "Mark of Excellence" emblazoned on the (metal!) seat belt buckles. These are the last cars to deserve this qualifier and I am glad that GM stopped using it after ditching them.

  • Galloping_gael Galloping_gael on Dec 29, 2010

    Beyond the aforementioned optispark issue, does anyone know of any other vehicle-specific issues to be aware of when checking one of these out?

    • See 1 previous
    • Galloping_gael Galloping_gael on Dec 29, 2010

      Thanks for reminding the clueless of the obvious. Perhaps I was being a bit ageist, but I assumed there was no way a Buick of that vintage would have interwebs devoted to it. How wrong I was...

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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