How long did it take to find your last classic car?

It never seems to take me long to find a classic to buy. Though much of the time I'm not looking, they find me!

My last car purchase, a '80 rubber bumper MGB, was sitting in the street in front of a friend's house. I asked him what was the story with the MG. He said it was his sister's car, it had been in storage for years but she was having a kid and didn't need the car or the storage fee. She wanted $1500 for it. I said,"Tell her I'll give her a thousand." He called her, then hollered to me from the house, "She says OK!"

I drove it home.

I used to have a London taxi that had belonged to my boss. The motor had spun a bearing, and it was sitting with the engine in pieces in the passenger compartment, the local diesel truck repair shop couldn't get parts for it. The shop needed space and they told my boss to come and get it. My boss knew I was an English car nut. He came to me and said that if I got it out of the mechanics shop by the weekend, I could have it. I had it towed home, wrote to the address on the firewall plaque about the parts I needed to overhaul the engine. Two months later I had it running.

Dave

It fell in my lap!

I used to belong to a sailing club and a close sailing buddy moved to Florida. When he came back in town for a visit we had beers & nachos at the sailing club. There, another member who I disconnected with told me he is retiring and moving to the Outer Banks of NC, selling off his house, getting rid of a car, some garage crap.... Oh, wait, back up. Car?

"Yeah, you probably never heard of it 'cause they don't make them anymore, a Porsche 914. I bought it through a girl I was dating in1974 that worked for Porsche NA. Decent deal, picked it up at the docks in NYC. Sleeps inside, been rained on five times that I recall and has 57,000 miles on it."

A weekend later I was at his house with a bottle of red and 35 one hundred dollar bills.

Dan

After I got back from Iraq I realized that I kinda had the world by the short hairs...I was ready to retire from the National Guard, I got promoted at work, more or less debt free, and single!

I figured well, nows the time to pull the trigger on something that I didnt intercept on its way to the junk yard, and that I have always wanted...at least since I was 12 when I saw a color picture of a 1967 Morgan +4.

I got online, bought a Hemmings, and called around to various Morgan clubs...I was ready to do some serious shopping and talking, really getting to know what I wanted(model, option wise) with no time limit. Wasnt but a week till all points lead to the car that I bought. I made some new friends and just love the car.

Leo

Mine just kinda fell into my lap also although not as dramatic as some above. My dad had the 70 Opel GT he used to teach my sister about engines (she rebuilt it) and called me and told me if I wanted it come and get it. As for the 63 Midget, my daughter came home and told me she new someone trying to get rid of some kind of small old sports car. I went and looked at it, found it wasn't a complete car (interior missing) but was restorable so I offered the kid $50 and he held out his hand and said it's yours, haul it off. I had to do the research to find out what year it was for the bill of sale.

GT6 did not take long. I bought the first car I looked at. The FIAT again fit the bill. I guess I could have looked around for a racer that was more prepped, but where is the fun in that?

A.

Ten years. I have loved the Bristol cars for ages and have missed out on two cars in the last one I saw that was in any way affordable.

Tonight after the RM British sale we were having drinks with subscriber and general British car nut John Nikas and he said he knew where I could by my left hand drive 407.

I should get an email from John tomorrow and cannot wait to get the car of my dreams for the last decade.

Bristol 407? Impeccable taste

I had wanted to start a new project for a few months. Does that time count? One of the members listed the "right" car on our website and I got lucky and was the first to call and make a deal.

I found mine on accident. I was looking on ebay, geez five years ago, for a 944. I thought, hmm, lets see whats happening in the MG world since I'd been without for three years. I was looking for something faster than a B for my next foray into automotive enthusiasm, but kept track of what I thought were upwardly creeping chrome bumper B prices.

I had just graduated from law school, you see, so I wanted to shed my romanticized, idealistic liberal arts mindset of old for the new, aggressive and fender flared mindset I acquired in law school.

Then I ran across a 71 BGT less than three hours away. The auction had bad photos, but the car looked good and solid and the description read honestly. It was a GT like my last MG, and the same color.

The price was very low, at $1600, and there were five bids, with the auction ending that evening. I was bartending at the time, and had to leave for work at the moment I was looking at the ad. I knew the auction would end that night, so I bid my max. I think my max bid was $1800.

I went to work and honestly forgot about it. When I returned home several hours later and well into the late night, I checked my email. I had won the auction. I thought at the time I would go and pick up a car with rusted sills and a knocking motor.

I enlisted a friend's help to pick up the car and when we drove up to the address. I thought the car I bought was inside the garage, and the one in the drive was the "keeper". Nope, I just bought a rust free GT with a new interior, records, and even a small stack of magazines, including this one, for $1760. I drove it for three highway hours to get home. It ran hot but it ran and never overheated.

I would go on, but I posted an essay to the website below. I knew I had a great deal, paid quickly and left. I have contacted the previous owner since then and emailed her several photos and videos of the cars exploits since leaving her care. I will never sell this car, and I found it on accident.

The photographs in the essay were taken by me, and I will try to attach an auto-cross pic if I can. Sorry for being longwinded. I had a long week.

http://www.carlustblog.com/2009/09/car-lust1971-mg-mgb-gt.html

The car in the avatar is the last one I bought, a '79 Mini 850. After selling my last toy, a Fiat 124 Spider I'd owned for over 20 years(!), I wanted to buy something the wife and I both had an interest in. We settled on Minis, and I found a good, helpful source in a dealer West PA Minis (sadly, no longer with us). They coached me on what to look for and eventually put me in touch with a guy selling an Innocenti that I ultimately didn't buy (long story with a rather foolish seller). They next put me in touch with the owner of the 850, whom they had sold the car to a few years earlier. He was thinning his herd and this was the one to go, a nice original 32,000 mile grandma car. We drove it a few miles and pretty much decided that there really wasn't any excuse NOT to buy it. It's been a surprisingly reliable and very fun car for us, and is still worth more than what we paid.

Still trying to decide on what to get... My heart says Miura SV, wallet is saying Fiat 2000...

Thinking about this thread I realized that I have rarely gone in search of a specific car. They seem to find me, grab onto my heartstrings and I buy them in a fit of stupidity (if you listen to my wife) or sagacity and foresight (as I prefer to characterize it).

Bought the Lamborghini because someone offered it to me. Bought the Jensen CV-8 because I happened across it (didn't even really know that much about them) thought that it looked pretty nifty (which probably says something uncomplimetary about my taste) and bought it pretty quickly. Same thing with the MGC - came across a good deal.

When I do go looking, normally because I suddenly came to the realization that life wouldn't be the same without one, I go at it gung ho until I find one.

Did that with the Solstice coupe - didn't want to get done out of a car as I was when I looked for a new 88 Fiero GT a couple of months too late after they ceased production (I am an optimist and keep thinking that next year they'll make an even better version - was waiting for a turbo for the Fiero - and that I should wait and get the best version). Searched around after checking to see that I could fit in one and nailed one of the 42 standard transmission coupes sent to Canada within a week.

Try that out some time - going from telling She-who-must-be-obeyed that 'Maybe we should think about selling that Fiero we've owned for 20 years and replacing it with something newer and dependable" (have to know which buttons to push) - to saying "Well, I bought that new Pontiac you figured might be a good idea" within a week is like doing 0 - 60 in under 4 seconds!