{"id":662,"date":"2008-10-09T11:55:55","date_gmt":"2008-10-09T17:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davintosh.com\/?p=662"},"modified":"2008-10-09T11:55:55","modified_gmt":"2008-10-09T17:55:55","slug":"i-found-my-next-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/2008\/10\/09\/i-found-my-next-car\/cars\/","title":{"rendered":"I Found My Next Car"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not one car in particular, but now I know what kind of car, and where I’ll likely be shopping.<\/p>\n

Ian is getting close to driving age, and the old Suzuki is getting a little long in the tooth, so shopping time is coming up in the next year or so. I’ve been thinking of maybe picking up a project car that Ian & I can work on next summer to have ready for him to drive to school next year, so I’ve been browsing Craigslist looking for deals. I haven’t found that perfect project car, but I have found some very interesting deals.<\/p>\n

What’s been really surprising to me is how cheaply some of the older luxury\/sports cars are selling in some markets. I’ve seen a couple of 10-15 year old BMW 750’s selling for less than $5,000 — that’s a V-12 powered luxury sedan that sold for nearly $100,000 new. Austin Craigslist had a 1996 750iL<\/a> with 112,000 miles for $4,500; it’s got some issues, but good grief! And I was just looking at this very decent looking 1999 740iL in Minneapolis for $4,995. $4,995!<\/em><\/p>\n

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In some markets it’s nothing to see 5-series BMW’s selling for $2,000—3,000 on Craigslist; not around here mind you, but they’re out there. And Porsches… My goodness. Seeing a 924 or 944 or 928 around here is a relative rarity, but looking in the listings from some of the larger cities, they are a dime a dozen. Amazingly, there’s someone in Madison who has an ’82 928 listed on Craigslist for $4,900. Wow. Cars that sold for $50,000 or more new 10-20 years ago selling for the same price as a Honda Civic of the same vintage. That’s just a little hard to understand. <\/p>\n

I would imagine part of the reason some of these formerly high-dollar machines are going so cheap has to do with dealer maintenance being pretty expensive, and seemingly compulsory. But with the explosion of sites like e38.org<\/a> and many others like it that provide tons of information on do-it-yourself maintenance for these machines… Well, who needs dealership service anyway? <\/p>\n

I know it’s one thing to see something that looks<\/em> nice on Craigslist and something else entirely to find something that is<\/em> nice, but at these prices it’s fun to look. Also dangerous; I just spied a 1988 BMW 638CSi for sale in Phoenix for $4,500. Must. Resist. Siren. Call…. The 6-series coupes are my all time favorite BMW form factor. And one from the desert… <\/p>\n

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Not one car in particular, but now I know what kind of car, and where I’ll likely be shopping. Ian is getting close to driving age, and the old Suzuki is getting a little long in the tooth, so shopping time is coming up in the next year or so. I’ve been thinking of maybe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cars"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davintosh.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}