Where Your Author Sells a Subaru During a Pandemic (Part I)
I last gave an update on the vehicles which occupy my drive back in February. At the time, the Volkswagen’s roof rattle issues had (finally) been corrected and I was all ready for a quick sale of my Subaru Outback. But said quick sale was interrupted by a few different issues, both local and global.
Uncertain Times for car sales, eh?
The Outback very nearly sold in early February. After listing it on the two quality lead generation sites, Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace, I had a buyer and a deposit. Said buyer walked away at the last moment for unspecified reasons via a hastily recorded voicemail message, but their deposit stayed with me. No big deal, I guess.
I renewed the sale listings right around the time the weather here in southwest Ohio turned frigid and icy, and nobody was car shopping. A couple of weeks passed, and as March dawned it seemed things were thawing enough for people to be out and about, buying cars. Of course, by then COVID had already begun phase one of its plan, and people were definitely not shopping transportation. Yet I was assured it would all be over by Easter, so I took down my sale listings.
All was uneventful (on the car front) for a couple of weeks, as I waited to put the Outback back on sale. Annoyed by a lull in the action, Mother Nature intervened. A fairly severe hailstorm arrived on the evening of April 8th. The winds which accompanied the storm were so intense that the dime-sized hail flew almost entirely in a northerly direction. That meant the Golf was shielded by the house, and the Outback wasn’t. I filed my first nature-related automotive insurance claim on April 9th.
While the damage was not severe, more than 40 visible dents had appeared across the Outback’s hood and roof. In the end I decided some light hail damage on a car I was finished owning was not worth a paintless-dent repair fix. Also in mind: The fact that I’m much pickier than most used car buyers. COVID raged on, and I kept the car off the market for the rest of spring.
I did eventually find a buyer, but we’ll get to that in Part II. Also in Part II, I’ll detail my ownership experience with a higher-mileage Outback over the past couple of years.
[Images: Corey Lewis / TTAC]
Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.
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"I’ll detail my ownership experience with a higher-mileage Outback over the past couple of years." I'm on the edge of my seat! I'm sure that will be a riveting read.
I got stuck with my PITA '91 Volvo 940 16v for a couple extra months due to Covid. Had a buyer, had gotten them tickets from DC to FL to pick it up 3/28. So that didn't happen. We mutually decided to wait. A couple of weeks ago I needed to be in Baltimore for work, and flights were ludicrous. Lightbulb goes off - *AutoTrain*. So I put the Volvo and myself on the train and delivered it, with work picking up the tab. NICE! AutoTrain is not great if you are too cheap to book a roomette, but better than driving an extra almost 900 miles in a car I don't really trust. Though of course it ran absolutely perfectly the 350 miles or so it took to get to the train, and then from train to new home. But I also sold a car and bought another car for myself. Sold my Fiata to Carmax (for all the monies) and bought a BMW 128i convertible in Wichita, KS (from the BMW dealer, also for all the monies, but less than I sold the Fiata for) and drove it to Maine last week, where it will spend the summer (or until FL stops being stupid - could be a while). Loved driving the Fiata, but I am just too big for that car. It got painful after an hour or so.