Meet the Buyers

The new buyer's sent me a few pix of themselves yesterday. I had sent them a couple of me on their request and I asked them to return the favor. So here they are, seen at their annualy arranged stand at the RETRO CLASSICS EXHIBITION March 2011 in Stuttgart. And they had just sold that '58 in the pix, which I why they wanted mine.

Lucille Has Left The Building...

The driver showed up on time and was very nice to work with this morning. We had Lucille loaded up very quickly and I went on to work. My buyer had asked me to take a few pictures of the loading, and I would have done so anyway.

So a little later I got this very nice email from the buyer...

 ...Did I tell you by the way, that it was an absolute pleasure dealing with you and that you were probably the most concerned, reliable and caring seller ever who we had to deal with...?

You are just pure class!! Thank you so much.

In November, we (my father and I) will be in in the US to buy several other cars; we will also be in LA for a couple of days. If you don't mind, I would really like to meet you and invite you to have some kind of nice dinner with us at some place which you can recommend.

Looking forward to receiving your pictures upon loading.

Best wishes and stay as you are, cause you are just perfect!

God bless you and your beloved ones!

That was very nice and I felt rather touched by it. I know lots of Cadillac friends in the Olde World and I have sold a few cars overseas before, so maybe that is why he found me very easy to work with on the wire transfer and all. I've done it before! In any case, they were also very nice and gracious to work with and it made the sale go very smoothly. I am quite happy with the outcome.

Pickup Scheduled

[114318] Talked to the driver today for the transport company and agreed to meet at 9:00 am Friday morning to get the car picked up. The funds transferred on Monday but were pending until Tuesday. Tuesday morning I signed the Bill of Sale and released the Title, sent copies via email to Baris and his dad, as well as CHris, the transport guy. I spoke to Chris Tuesday but he said he'd have the driver call me and work out the time. So now that's done and all I have to do is wait. I'll have half my garage back on Friday.

Yes, I *have* been eyeing other cars on eBay, but I'm going to resist temptation. These funds will pay off the Pontiac. :-)

You know, I bought this car with 113591 miles on it and I'm selling it now with 114318 miles. Wow, all of 727 miles. As of May of last year, when the insurance company wanted an ODO check, the reading was 114230. 88 miles in over a year. I've never driven a car so little. So  I think I know the reason I decided to sell... not really a car I like enough to drive.

Preparation

I loaded all the spare parts, wheels, hub caps, original oil filter housing, original heater valve, valve cover gasket set, original steering box, etc. into the trunk today. I also removed the license plates and the battery float charger pigtail. I noticed when I opened the car door, the edge of the fender at the gap with the door is scraping just a bit. That is new! Never had it do that before. UPDATE: I think I know why... the inner fender panel I removed to re-route the heater hoses a week or so ago... that would throw the fender out of alignment enough to do this. Hmmm...

I'm working on getting together what documentation I have and putting it on a CD-ROM. All my stuff is in electronic Acrobat/PDF format, so it's very portable.

Chatting and Arranging

So the deposit came through last night and then this morning emails were going back and forth with the wire transfer info and stuff. I got a call from the buyer's son who is in Turkey. He was using Skype to call my cell and it wasn't bad but sometimes there were strange pauses where the last sound before the pause seemed to stretch out like string of mozzarella cheese from a bite of pizza. Odd. I talked to the shipper today too and he is going to have one of his drivers call next week sometime. Naturally the payment all has to be settled before the car can be picked up. I'll need to gather all the stuff that will be going with the car now.

Sold!

Well, I ended up not doing too badly. I think it went for more than I really expected but at the same time, less than I paid for it and certainly none of the money invested in repairs and maintenance was recovered. Such is life. Had it not sold, and I had kept it longer, it would have meant even more money spent, as I would have to deal with the exhaust crossover (not a problem functionally, but the sound was annoying), and eventually the interior. There are so many things each of my cars "needs" that I just don't see any end to the amounts of money I will continue to throw away. But at least there is one less to throw it at. This will pay off most of the Pontiac loan and when I polish that off, I have to decide if that will be a keeper or one of the ones liquidated. :(

I looked up the web site from my buyer's email and found a "partner" company, http://www.baz-dreamcars.com/, so I don't imagine the buyer will be keeping Lucille as his own but will resell it. Well, this is what Rik Gruwez of the Cadillac Mailing List does too, so I guess I don't mind. I looked at the cars on the site and I see one other '58 Cad for sale, as well as an Impala. I see lots of Benz's there too. Nice ones, but I didn't look all that closely.He has already sent the deposit and I sent him wire instructions for the balance. He said his son is going to call me. Hopefully this is quick and painless for all involved.

eBay Fun... about a day and a half left

I had so many offers to end my auction early, I finally set a reserve. It's below the "low retail" value NADA lists, but I was starting to feel it wasn't going to even come close to getting that high. Now tonight I see it is less than $900 from the reserve and there is 1 day, 18 hours left until closing. I'm really starting to get nervous. Am I doing the right thing, is the buyer going to feel the car is worth the price, am I stupid to sell, isn't it really worth hanging onto, no I need to get rid of some of these projects that I can't possibly finish... And that is kind of the bottom line for me. I like the four hobby cars I have, but the '76 needs some work and maybe a paint job to be decent. The Pontiac has been stopped cold from any progress for a couple months now, the '49 has just rekindled some excitement in me and I need to make some progress there... The '58 is a solid car, with lots of potential. I made some headway on it but I'm not happy with the exhaust and the front end work was a great start but now the rear needs to be gone through, the upholstery is not bad but it needs a refresh. Fortunately she still looks good enough to take out and have people just make a fuss over her, so that's why I think she is the one to sell... a very popular style with some solid value. I hope the new owner... assuming the reserve gets met... feels good about the purchase once he's got it.

eBay Fun

I listed this as an auction the other day... started it off low, or what I think of as low. $9K. 3 days and no bids so far. Man, things are rough out there in the market. I got one person emailing me and wanting me to close the auction for the opening bid price. Where do these people come from? I blocked him.

Headlight Downgrade...

Removing the Hellas from Lucille today. Why? It was an expensive upgrade and I'd just as soon not pass it on to the next owner... and have them not appreciate it. It also is just a bit overkill, being super bright. I might have gone a bit too hot with the wattage on these. :-) Anyway, took about 45 minutes to do all 4 lamps and there were no issues. If I keep the car and decide I need to drive it in the dark, I can put them back in.

A Little Tinkering

Pulled Lucille out of the garage and took off the left front wheel so I could go back into the fenderwell and re-route the heater hoses and put some ties on the wiring harness there.I had to pull the inner fender panel to do this, but it's been so long since I did the brakes and it needed to be tidied up.So that's done now. And I also undid what I had started to do with the Start-em-up kit. No point in proceeding with that if I am going to sell her off. (Still kinda torn on that issue, but I think I just need to do it.)

Radio

Been having an issue with the rear channel on the radio where it sounds very distorted. I finally called Dan Steele and asked him how much he'd charge to go through it for me again. He wanted me to try a different speaker before I pack it off for repairs so I did that today. No distortion! So I'm feeling stupid that I didn't try this earlier, but then I reconnected the original speaker and... no distortion! What happened there? Well, I guess I'll just ride it out for a bit and see what happens. Maybe I'll replace that speaker just for grinns.

Hmmm...

Well I put up a classified ad on eBay a few days ago, and I had one person come to see it tonight... he brought his dad and brother. Had pretty mixed feelings as part of me would like to sell her and part doesn't want to. But ultimately, these buyers did not make a good impression on me. I felt they completely overlooked the car as it sits and only thought about how they could turn it into a DeVille with a $5000 interior makeover. Completely didn't get the steering and brake upgrades and pretty much didn't care about anything I had done. Talked about adding some kind of plastic chrome strip to the rear window reveal... I guess I should not be surprised, but I don't approach cars that way, when someone has obviously put some work into it. You may not like what someone has done, but you have to give a little respect to the amount of work that goes into it. None of them seemed particularly mechanically inclined as "dad" did not recognize the remote oil filter and the prospective buyer asked me what the master cylinder jutting out of the cowl was. I then explained about the disc brake upgrade and the dual circuit system... he seemed astonished. I covered that in the ad and, sorry boys, but car guys that I know would pick up on that right away. I don't think this car is a good fit for them.

Pictures

Washed her up and took some pix today:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/3ar9xr2

Price Check

Just doing a little poking around and I decided to check the price NADA lists for this car.

NADA Guide Pricing for Series 62 coupe.

I have no definite plans to try selling... yet. But the truth is, if I had to sell one, and I might feel the need soon, this car is probably the most valuable and salable. I like her, and I've just begun to get her into the kind of shape I would like one of my cars to be in. Put some serious work into her. But she needs more and if I had to, I could part with her.

Drive

Another parts run at OSH. Nothing special to note except that I noticed the very loud road noise this car had and if I am going do much driving of this car on crappy L.A. streets, I'm going to need to do something about it. I asked around about other folks who had done any major sound deadening projects and one person on the CML told me his experience. I'm going to plan on doing this as soon as I finish up the current Pontiac upgrades that are occupying all of my time. To do it right, I will really need to remove the entire interior.