new winter car!!! Toyota SUPRA

DomWoo · Post by **DomWoo** » Sun Dec 26, 2004 5:43 am

bought my new winter car today.. gave the CRX to the wife so she can drive to her new job..

lol i dont think a turbo charged 6cyl rear wheel drive car was ment for snow... o'well it was $600 and is probably the fastest car i have ever owned.. fast as hell

kinkyllama · Post by **kinkyllama** » Sun Dec 26, 2004 8:56 am

How the hell was it $600?!

DomWoo · Post by **DomWoo** » Sun Dec 26, 2004 2:54 pm

it was my buddies moms car... they havnt drivin it in over 2 years so i offered them some money and they took it

kinkyllama · Post by **kinkyllama** » Sun Dec 26, 2004 7:28 pm

Holy crap. What year? I used to love supras when i was like 12. I got to ride in one with over 750 hp.

AcingTeam · Post by **AcingTeam** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 5:46 am

yea, it's probably like a 1988-92 one

DomWoo · Post by **DomWoo** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 6:36 am

yep its 1990.. the condition of the car is amazing for how old it is

kinkyllama · Post by **kinkyllama** » Mon Dec 27, 2004 8:28 am

Still arnt bad cars id take it for that money especialy.

Post by **PrecisionBoost** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 2:07 am

Just watch out for the timing belt.... make sure you change it before the recomended service.

I knew a couple of guys who had late 80's early 90's Supras and both died due to timing belt failure.

Hmmm.... $600 sound like a nice deal.... maybe I should trade you for a 2.0L turbo engine (installed)

I allways liked Supras.... I almost bought a loaded 1990 Targa Turbo but the guy I knew at the dealership said it was an "auction" car and that I shouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole

kinkyllama · Post by **kinkyllama** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 3:29 am

what the hells an 'auction car' supposed to mean?

BosnianLanos · Post by **BosnianLanos** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 4:40 pm

Police Auction??

Post by **PrecisionBoost** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 3:48 am

Ok.... when a dealership takes your half dead piece of crap car in on trade and they find out they would have to sink a couple grand into they simply send it to auction.

Most dealerships will have guys at the auction picking up vehicles when their stock of used cars gets low.... so they buy cars knowing full well that they have some kind of problem with them and then sell them to suckers like you guys.

They usually try to pick nice looking cars because most people buy cars based upon the looks.

Half the time they just do quick fixes to make sure no mechanical problems will show up right away.

In the case of the 1990 Supra targa turbo he said it needed a timing belt in a bad way and that the engine had some major oil leaks that would need to be repaired.

The engine looked great to me but that was because they steam cleaned it and filled it with heavy weight oil.... and the sales staff were under strict orders not to start up the car or test drive it unless they felt the customer was serious about the car.

If I remember correctly the car was selling for $10,000 and he figured the engine work needed would run about $2000 (my cost with wholesale parts and 20% off labor)

Needless to say I was tempted even at $12k but he said it was a bad deal and he figured that the car had been driven hard most of it's life.

I know a few guys in management at a couple different dealerships so I usually talk to them so that they can steer me away from the "NFG" cars such as the ones they get from auction.

They also buy lots of lease backs from rental companies and fleet sales... so the people that drive those cars typically couldn't care less if they bagged the crap out of the car.

What you really want is the cars that are very carefully taken care of... where the owners love their car but want to get a new one because their old one has a few too many miles on it.

BosnianLanos · Post by **BosnianLanos** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 3:00 am

IDK, guess that does suck, however, I have never owned a used car, unless you count the time we came to America and all our broke asses could afford was a 1984 Ford Limited. POS car, got the ole' death rattle at 65 MPH, and in its waning days, the tranny jumped into gear and ran me over, messing up my knee.

Since then me, and my family have all bought brand new cars. New Lanos, New Honda Civic, two in fact, New Mazda Protege, New Toyota Camry, New Ford Escort, etc.

I don't consider myself a "sucker" to dealerships, people at the Honda dealership hate me because I got them to sell me a brand new Civic LX Sedan A/T(whopping 11 miles) for $13,900.

People at the Toyota dealership called me for 4 months after the appointment, because they tried to sell me a Corolla for like $20,000 and I walked out mid-deal (after I almost hit the guy). They sales manager, general manager, and salesman all followed me out to my car trying to make me a deal.

It's a well known fact that people at auto dealerships are thieves, and to never buy used cars from dealers, but you gotta remember, your buying the car, it's not buying you.

Post by **PrecisionBoost** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 6:37 am

I don't normally buy new cars... the depreciation is a killer.

I bought my Lanos new because it was a steal of a deal at $9950 CDN which was about $6400 USD at that time.

It was a 5spd Lanos S without any options... but I thought it was a great car.

I also bought the Optra 5 new but that's because I really really missed having options such as air conditioning and power windows.... plus I have had plans for modifying it so I figured the depreciation is worth it.

Other than those two vehicles I've allways bought used... and most of the time I've bought them from dealerships where I knew the sales manager or general manager.

Basicly they would walk me out onto the lot and pick out about 7 cars they would recommend... and many of the times they knew the people that owned the cars so they could tell me if it was driven nicely and serviced regularly.

Considering the one dealership usually had roughly 100 used cars and he only directed me to 7 decent ones you can imaging that the other 93 people didn't get a good deal.

Used cars are like playing Roulette... sometimes you win but most of the time you loose.

TheGreatAndPowerfulOz · Fri Dec 31, 2004 7:47 am

Erfinder wrote: Used cars are like playing Roulette... sometimes you win but most of the time you loose.

Good thing you get to live another day to buy another used car ... unlike the alternative!! LOL

Cliff

Post by **PrecisionBoost** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 7:29 pm

I was talking about Gambling .... not the version that uses a single bullet.

I know somebody that is a master of used car buying.... he typically purchases a single type of car on a very regular basis ( I think he's still driving Toyota MR2's now.... I haven't seen him in a while)

Basicly he buys cars and sells cars on a week to week or month to month basis....often he will buy a car really cheap from someone and list it the next day... sometimes it takes him several weeks or months to sell the car but he allmost allways makes a profit.

He keeps a "backup" car for when he sells the others and he uses a dealer plate so he can swap cars like you swap socks.

He keeps to a single car type because he gets very familiar with the drivetrain and can pick out simple problems that cause the car to run funny.

Many times the owners think their engine is about to die so they try to dump it off.... he will swoop in and tell the guy that he's got a replacement engine in his garage... and then does some wheeling and dealing on the price to get it down to where he can make a few hundred or thousand on the resale.

Typically it will be something simple like a bad Idle air control valve... he spends a couple hundred on it while he drives it around.... makes it run nice and smooth and then sells it.

He told me once about four years back that he had 56 cars in one year and that he made about $15,000 in the process.

Given this is only about $250 to $275 per car you can see how it's possible to flip cars quickly.

He usually spends around $5000 to $10,000 for vehicles that have mileage levels between 60,000 miles to 80,000 miles on them.

He said you would be surprized what a good tune up, cleaning and waxing can do to the resale of a car.

He told me that there was one time a few years back where he had three different cars in one week.... he bought an MR2 with about 55K miles on it one morning, listed it in the paper in the afternoon and sold it the next evening to a guy who had an older MR2 that wasn't running well (had 80K miles on it)... so he bought the older MR2 took it home that night, replaced the spark plugs, spark plug wires, adjusted the timing, replaced the battery and one vacume line.... and the engine purred like a kitten.
He cleaned it up and listed it the next day and sold it two days later... for $800 more than what he paid for it.... he then drove around his "spare" car for a couple days and picked up another MR2 at the auction later in the week. ( I think that one had bent shifter linkage so it would pop out of gear once in a while and grind going into 2nd gear ) He just went down to the local scrap yard... picked up some parts and fixed it up without any problem.

I was allways tempted to follow the same path...but I really didn't know that much about cars and engines back then.

He had all kinds of spare stuff.... he allmost allways took out decent car audio equipment and sold it on the side... sometimes he would get a spare car from the wrecking yard and swap all the factory parts back onto a modified car that he had bought... then he'd sell the car for what he paid for it and sell all the extras to make his profit ( usually a set of rims, stereo, amp and speakers would net him about $800 to $1500 )

Hmmm.... this is bringing up memories.... I should see if he's still around... I allways laughed when he showed up with a new car... often I would say "what another one ?? what happend to the nice red one?" and he'd say "red one?? hell I sold that two cars ago where have you been?"

Sorry for the long post.... I just thought it was an interesting story.