What's a good Wheeler Dealer car?

Say you were to go out and Wheeler Dealer something in your area, what do you think you could actually get a decent amount of money out of refurbishing in a limited amount of time (say six months). Any starting budget, but you have to do the work or account for the cost if you farm it out.

Granted this is dependent very much on the deal you can get on the car. Like I've heard of people giving up non-running cars on the cheap that required some easy fix to get running again, but at the same time there are probably cars that are better for this than others.

Bland sells quickly.
Look for something that a single parent can afford and fit their kids into, like a 4 door.
Buy something like a non-running Grand Am 4 door. Clean it and get it running again with JY parts for a quick profit.

Specialty cars will be much slower to sell.

Really it depends on your knowledge and what makes you are comfortable with.

Let me give you an example.

http://austin.craigslist.org/cto/4681510380.html

This could be a great car to flip or it could be your worse nightmare. If you know boxsters well and know what the common problems, You could do really good especially if it's an easy fix. I don't know boxsters so it still sits for sale.

Look at your area as well. What are there a lot of and what sells good? Trying to flip a truck in NYC or LA may not make a lot of sense but in Texas it makes perfect sense.

I personally could flip a ton of NA miata's because I worked on enough of them but at the current prices, it really doesn't make much sense.

R53 cooper S

For a quick flip for some extra dollars and that is easy to work on. I would go with a Honda Civic. Lots of people looking for them. Lots of parts around. Lots of younger crowd still find them appealing so would be great for a Wheeler Dealer.

5.0 Fox Body

bmw88rider wrote: Really it depends on your knowledge and what makes you are comfortable with. Let me give you an example. http://austin.craigslist.org/cto/4681510380.html This could be a great car to flip or it could be your worse nightmare. If you know boxsters well and know what the common problems, You could do really good especially if it's an easy fix. I don't know boxsters so it still sits for sale.

I want to believe we can fix this on the cheap, mostly because I want a Porsche Boxster S for $5-7k

JohnRW1621 wrote: Bland sells quickly. Look for something that a single parent can afford and fit their kids into, like a 4 door. Buy something like a non-running Grand Am 4 door. Clean it and get it running again with JY parts for a quick profit. Specialty cars will be much slower to sell.

I agree, but I don't think there is much profit potential there. The auto market is so huge and there are so many players you really have to know what you are doing or get really lucky to get a good enough deal to eeeek out any real profit.

In a specialty car, by definition, you are decreasing the size of the market and therefore increasing your chances of finding an abnormality. Will it take longer to sell, yes, but I think your individual chances are much better.

i.e. 100 ford taurus flippers exist in your city right now, but there may be only one person flipping SVX's, for example. That means as a flipper, you have better chances.

I would also argue you have better chances flipping something that peoples emotions can get behind. Even in car buying decisions, emotion > logic and wins the decision almost everytime. So if you have a better car to get emotion on your side with ("OH, I HAVE WANTED ONE OF THOSE SINCE HIGH SCHOOL!!"), you have a better chance of selling it for non-logical money.

That's the other thing, I would think where you sell a particular car online might gain or lose you money. Say a specialty website vs a general autotrader type site.

I wonder if I could flip a Grand National. Eh, probably not.

Coming form a guy that actually flips cars. Camry and Corolla.

If I got a silver/beige Corolla every week of the year from auctions. I could sell them all for cash and make 1.5K profit on every single car until I died. There just not enough of them out there to do it.

Miata in the fall, sell in spring.

Any of the early 90s-2000s Hondas seem to go for more than I think they're worth.

Nissan 240sx.

Of course, you need to get those on the cheap, either non-enthusiast owner (ideal) or kid who got in over his head (less ideal)

I like the Saturn S series because I can usually find a couple for under $1000 at any given time, parts are plentiful in the Junkyard, easy to work on and I'm familiar with them.

Biggest customer base will be something automatic & decent on gas with a reputation for reliability.

Right now I'm sitting on a 97 2dr Integra I picked up cheap, hoping to have it up and running well for under $1300 including purchase price, fingers crossed. People ask that much for basket cases so I'm confident I'll do ok.

*I live in People's Republic of California, your market place may vary. Smog passability is a factor here. Also am not a car flipper, I buy more than I sell

I've wanted to get into it but its hard down here in san diego. Miata's hold a good value no matter what, junk yards have absoutly no civic or miatas with anything of value left after just a few hours of being there, and there no money in flipping a 95 civic thats 3 different colors with 200k miles and a salavage title with a list price of 2500...

I thought about econo boxes but once you maybe find something you then hit the smog problems we have in CA. When my miata didn't pass smog I got a deal and paid only 300 bucks for a new cat. For a 25 year old car

ouchx100 wrote: I've wanted to get into it but its hard down here in san diego. Miata's hold a good value no matter what, junk yards have absoutly no civic or miatas with anything of value left after just a few hours of being there, and there no money in flipping a 95 civic thats 3 different colors with 200k miles and a salavage title with a list price of 2500... I thought about econo boxes but once you maybe find something you then hit the smog problems we have in CA. When my miata didn't pass smog I got a deal and paid only 300 bucks for a new cat. For a 25 year old car

Yeah it takes work, I've found some deals on SD Craigs, but in that area I'd focus on the cars being sold quickly by those who are getting deployed elsewhere. And if you wanna play in the $2000 and under stuff, lower your purchase price on unsmogged cars by $200-$400? Parting cars too if you have the room and time.

Ever since LKQ took over the Pick Your Parts, they have their inventory on the website which is a blessing and a curse. Cars like that are picked clean as soon as they're known.

With stock Honda parts, at least in my experience, it's the same, if not cheaper to buy from private parties vs the JY. Plus the parts are already pulled.

At least SD is close to that body shop in Mexico that the vintage Porsche guys use.

I would say it depends on where you live. Around here, I'd get some sort of domestic truck, maybe '90's or '00's. My brother just sold his '98 GMC, and he could have sold it a hundred times over. Somebody drove 75 miles to come get it and bought it at full price, and it wasn't cheap. It wasn't even that nice.

In Colorado, I would say some sort of Subaru for instance. Me, I would probably go for a Miata as there always seems to be a market, and well, I like them better. In truth, a generic people mover would be the easiest to sell and make money on. My buddy makes money tuning over Camrys and the like. They're dirt cheap if they have issues, and he can usually double his money with a bit of effort.

DuctTape&Bondo wrote:

ouchx100 wrote: I've wanted to get into it but its hard down here in san diego. Miata's hold a good value no matter what, junk yards have absoutly no civic or miatas with anything of value left after just a few hours of being there, and there no money in flipping a 95 civic thats 3 different colors with 200k miles and a salavage title with a list price of 2500... I thought about econo boxes but once you maybe find something you then hit the smog problems we have in CA. When my miata didn't pass smog I got a deal and paid only 300 bucks for a new cat. For a 25 year old car

Yeah it takes work, I've found some deals on SD Craigs, but in that area I'd focus on the cars being sold quickly by those who are getting deployed elsewhere. And if you wanna play in the $2000 and under stuff, lower your purchase price on unsmogged cars by $200-$400? Parting cars too if you have the room and time. Ever since LKQ took over the Pick Your Parts, they have their inventory on the website which is a blessing and a curse. Cars like that are picked clean as soon as they're known. With stock Honda parts, at least in my experience, it's the same, if not cheaper to buy from private parties vs the JY. Plus the parts are already pulled. At least SD is close to that body shop in Mexico that the vintage Porsche guys use.

I didn't know that about the junk yards. I don't spend much time there as the ones in Chula Vista are the only ones that have miata stuff usually and they are usually picked clean. My other car is a 2006 wrx so no junk yard parts for it. And yea if I was gonna do it I'd probably do un smoged sales ( would I even be able to sell a car if I just never transferred the title into my name? ) on cheaper cars.

I wanted to do a subaru but there's no deals on there around here either. Good late 90s - early 2000s are 3-4 and bad ones are usually not going to be worth that even after you fix what's wrong. I'll have to look into camrys. I thought they never broke lol

I've found the used car business (unless you are a stealership or are buying at auctions) ain't what it used to be. When people had to put effort in browsing the local paper and trader classifieds, that took work.

Now you can set up Kijiji (and possibly craigslist?) to alert you to any ad posted with XXXX specifications. Everyone has gotten in on it making it that much more difficult.

Six months?! Of the last three cars I've flipped, the longest I've owned one was 45 days, and that was only because of shipping delays.

My pick would be a four door Honda with automatic transmission, noisey brakes and a bad exhaust.

I've heard someone talking about buying vw new beetles- automatics, in great shape for under a grand. Apparently there is some transmission issue that renders them inop, but is easy to fix. An unlovable car, loved by teenaged girls (who are unreasonable creatures).... I think this is the win. A cheap-ass car will always be a cheap-ass car- meaning, I don't see a lot of money to be made flipping fox mustangs, or grand am's. At least the Beetle is lovable to someone.

A WRX like the one GRM bought.

I have been buying and selling cars for 14 years. I probably flip between 20 to 30 cars a year, so I have a solid idea of what sells, and what doesn't. As already mentioned Camrys and corollas are great sellers but they suck to flip. The reason is they are so hard to come by for a price you can make money on, I don't even bother with them any more.

I sell every wrangler I can get my hands on. I have done well with Diesel trucks with high mileage, and C4 Corvettes. I also look for weird stuff. Some times it takes awhile to sell but there is generally more money to be made.

This year has kind of sucked and I am sitting on three cars that haven't sold in almost 90 days. One is a convertible Camaro with a stick, another is a 2000 mr2, and the third is a Cadillac SRX that I get calls on daily but everyone wants to finance it. I have flipped 20 cars this year so far, which is about 5 down from last year at this point. the last two that I sold were both SUV's (a pathfinder, and a 4Runner)

If you don't mind my asking what's the profit you make on the flips end up being? I guess it makes it worth the amount of time put in?

I have long held the suspicion that a Mercedes R107 SL has a lot of potential. I've seen scruffy ones for $3000, and ten foot cars for $4500 on up to $10000. And I'm not talking 560s.

It seems condition is a big part of it, so I expect the right cheap runner could get a few weekends of cleanup and tune up, and come out the other end as a far more valuable car. Add the right venue for the sale, and I really think there is money to be had.

I think if you want to make money flipping cars it is best to have an excellent working knowledge of a particular model or brand. That way you will know the little things that make people feel like the car is junk and will let it go for cheap money. It also helps to have a stable of parts or parts cars. You do the repair inexpensively and sell at market level. I have a friend that deals with 70's and 80's Porches, he knows them inside and out. He can buy a car for a few hundred because it doesn't run, spend a few hours washing it and replacing a couple of parts he has on the shelf and sells it for a few thousand. One of my kids is a Nissan tech and we thought we could do well flipping late 90's Maxima's as they have a couple of known issues that render them almost un-drivable and the repairs are not that difficult. We flipped two and just barely made any money and spent many hours working on them. We decided unless we were out of work, it was too much effort to make just a few hundred dollars per sale. We also learned that sticking to cars that just need mechanical work is important. Bodywork gets expensive quickly, there are no cheap paint jobs anymore. We tried to get two doors painted and it was going to be almost three hundred dollars, same as we paid for the car. Some people are much better at being in the right spot to get that killer deal and are also great sales people. I have a hard time selling water to someone dying in the desert, my boss can sell ice to an eskimo. YRMV!

In reply to Harvey:

The average per car is about $800.00. I try to sell cars in the 3k to 5k price range. Sometimes I make more, for example I made over $4000 on a car earlier this year but that is definitely the exeption not the norm.

I made $500 on the pathfinder I sold last week, and $1000 on the 4 runner I sold before that. I was happier with the pathfinder deal because I only had it for 10 days and all I did was wash it and put it on Craigslist.

The camaro I am trying to sell nickle and dimed me to the point where I will be happy to break even. That's part of the game I guess.

You make your money when you buy the car, not when you sell it

Hey, a subject that's near and dear to my heart. I pretty much go for whatever I find that is a neat car and think I can turn a profit on. The way I do things is, to look at Craigslist to see what prices decent cars of the same one I am looking to flip are going for. So say this E39, Found it for $1000, did a quick search of E39 525i on CL and saw that decent ones were going for around $4.5K, so after looking at it I made a best guess that I could fix it for about half that, and if not, then I could at least part it out for the purchase price or more.

It's kinda funny you brought this up, I was about to post up a question of what I should try and flip next after this E39. I really would like to do a nice 80's super car, but no one buys those down here, or at least they don't want to spend a decent amount for a nice one. So I'm not sure what I'll get next.