The Real Deal: Deal or No Deal?

Out of 200 Ford Motor Credit cars at the auction yesterday I bought 10. Seven that I designated for retail, three for wholesale. I was second to last bidder on appoximately 30 more. Which means from a sellers perspective, I was crucial to him driving his overall prices up. The truck in question is an ’04 F150 4×4 reg cab with 60k on it. Terrible paint, needs a solid grand spent on a strip down and repaint. But it was cheap, I mean silly cheap. I gave $5,000 for this little pearl, and ready to go it’s worth 9-10 grand. The why is simple. It’s a 4×4 with under 80k miles in a recent body style. That’s the why on the value part. The why on, how did I get it for 5,000 is not as simple.

The answer: mainly timing, and condition. The truck looked like a cow’s ass sewn up with a grapevine bc of the paint. Someone mixed the paint wrong on a repaint, and just ruined it. That was $2,500 of the $5,000 price discrepancy. The other $2,500 A) end of the auction B) I’d been buying heavy all day, running the bidders, and everyone was just tired out in reality. Opportunities like that happen regulary, but one must hunt hunt hunt, and be patient and ready to react when opportunity arises.

Leaving the auction yesterday, I give the post-sale inspection people all 10 purchase slips with instructions “give me a 7 day post sale on these” Translation: I’ll pay you $115 per unit to inspect these purchases, and guarantee me for 7 days nothing breaks. Cool, I’m off to lunch.

This morning I call my paint man, ask him to go pick up this pick up to repaint. He sends drivers to the auction, driver calls me with message “The gate pass to the truck I came to pick up is not here?” I thought, “hmmm, it must have been arbitraded off the post sale inspection, hmm somethings must be wrong with it. I’ll call arbitration and see what’s up. But for me not to take this thing $5,000 back of the money, it’ll have to have a blown motor and tranny.”

Arbitration lady tells me “we called you yesterday, told left a message, I said “no you didn’t, what’s the deal?” She replies, ”well it was arbitrated for uppper engine noise.” I’m thinking “OK, $500 fixes that so big whoop.” She continues to tell me the sale was unwound; it’s checked-in for next week’s Ford sale.

I say “THE HELL IT IS, that’s my truck, I own it.” She say’ ‘The hell you do. We’ve paid Ford for all the deals yesterday, that truck was not one of them, and that truck belongs to Ford Motor Credit.”

This is a very odd scenerio for those in the trade. Typically buyers are arguing to get OUT of a car that didn’t pass arbitration. Whereas, I am arguing to keep a deal together. I have never in my years experienced this.

So I bought the auctions additional services, and it cost me an estimated $2500 net wholesale profit. My argument: I’m their customer. I paid them to inspect the truck, and then to advise me on its condition so that I can make a business decision. They took it upon themselves to make that decision for me, and I’m not very happy with the decision they made. I paid for an inspection, not business advise, or did I?

I’ve only bought and sold about 20,000 used cars in my day. Guess I’m still learning. I feel like Brad in Fast Times “Hope you had a hell of a piss Arnold!” Maybe next time I shouldn’t try to be so careful.