How about woodie station wagon 'gassers' with surf boards on the top in the midwest? Yep, seen the pics.
How about ads stating the seller is ''testing the waters''? Cracks me up rather than peeving me off. Like they're going to generate excitement ahead of time. So folks can get ready to fight over whatever is coming soon!
Or the ad with no price that says, "Make an offer". Do your own damn homework, I'm not gonna be the buyer and the seller at the same time .
Worst is the idea that wide whitewalls belong on any car which hasn't been a common sight in a while — like a 1978 Lancia?
These may of been mentioned before, but mine are: "numbers matching" in an ad for something like a beat up 50's something 4 door sedan! or calling a a "hardtop"...why Yes it is....it ain't a soft top!
Saw an ad for a two door coupe only yesterday. This might only be an AU/UK thing, but ads by restorers or even just when describing a car, they love to say "one of xxx remaining." How do they know that? Sometimes they give a modified version "believed to be one of only xxx remaining." I mean, I don't don't really care, but my usual reaction is either "how do they know that?" or "who gives a fuck?" Especially if it's some stodgy mass produced 4 door sedan.
my car was technically advertised similar. "its the original motor, 4 door sedan that looks like a hardtop, call (hidden information)"
Damn, 9 pages. I hope the meds shipment isn’t being hauled by Yellow Trucking or this could go on forever. I hate daylight savings time enough to loose sleep over it. I hate people that use big words. They just want to make themselves look perspicacious.
Ok. The thing that Irk's my ass the most is "Number's Matching!!!"(for instance)... I have a number's matching L-88 that was purchased over the counter from a local Chevy dealer... REALLY!!! What do the numbers match, and why do you think it's worth a small fortune? Unless you have the car that has the same partial VIN that's stamped in the block, it's a core and only worth a little more than scrap price! WTF, Man!!!
Its what happened when this "activity" was taken up by those whose soul interest is making money , the cars have become just another way to do that .
A few years go the "go to" phrase at the auction houses was "numbers car" as in "this corvette is a numbers car". Did it mean numbers matching? That is not what they said, but that is what the buyer read into it. All cars have numbers on them, some of them mean something, most don't.
It's more of a "matching dates" thing anymore, at least the mega buck cars require it. You don't want your 6 million dollar Camaros' engine to be dated later than the production date of the car.
Yep! I've heard the phrase "somebody did a real number on that one!" Not sure if it means the same thing
I had a guy not buy some Cleveland heads off me a couple of years ago because they were a month out from what he wanted.
"Very Rare. One of only 14 made!" Yup.... a '65 Chevelle four door station wagon, ordered with fender mounted side view mirrors, or some other stupid ass thing. Some trace back to a color combination that was either a factory overstock that the dealer couldn't unload, or some stupid mis-match of options.
The thing that irks me is when people apply the numbers-matching principle where it's simply irrelevant. The whole thing comes out of Detroit's level of tooling capitalization plus a modular approach which allows a lot of options. Not all cars were made that way! Numbers-matching implies a sharp distinction between processes of manufacture and maintenance/repair/modification/etc. — a tall fence around the Factory, as it were. With many smaller manufacturers before WWII that fence barely existed. The processes of manufacture flowed into those of maintenance etc. without any real kind of boundary. Numbers-matching is meaningless in that context — and then you start piling on the complex provenance, all the rebodied-in-1936 stories.
I always wonder why when you could build a car in any way imaginable, you would choose to replicate a movie car instead of building something uniquely yours.
Somehow I'm reminded of a certain model of MoPar that got homologated for racing by Chrysler building enough to ship to dealers that they'd be legal in the eyes of Pope Bill... and those dealers having to sit on cars that they just could not sell as-is. Many dealers stripped off the model-specific items and returned the cars to "stock" configuration a year or two after they'd been sitting idle. They finally sold and THOSE cars are the rare ones....
Those who are good at building / repairing are seldom good at business. " looking up" what something's worth is difficult because most prices you see are " asking" price ,not what it sold for price . most of us want to receive what an item is worth but it seems to do that one has to double the asking price then reduce the price to sell it . I'm not a salesman. don't have the temperament to be a salesman , honesty is thrown out the window in most sales situations. If I have $5 to spend & can't buy what I want ,I move on . If a person can't sell something at his asking price , his price may be to high . Its really a silly game . A bit of honesty , less price gouging ,low balling , would go a long way towards clearing things up ! How do YOU accurately determine & set your price ? You present yourself as an expert . Face it , we all want to get the best deal we can none of us wants to overpay . Tell us how to determine value ,especially since it varies region by region ,day to day .
Yeah, I had a guy not buy at a swap meet, a 2X4 manifold w/carbs off a '56 Chrysler 300, because he checked Google on his phone, and said that the Carbs were December '55 dates, so the Manifold wasn't a '56....gimme a break, asshat dontya think Chrysler just might of used some Decembe'55 carbs in '56?
I see an add for a 66 yr old engine, brand new still in the box with box cover off for viewing. I ask where was it stored all these years? I got told stupid question, in the box.
I don't have too many pet peeves, except those darn kids who keep riding their bikes past my house. But other than that it is RPM's. And it's becoming more and more prevalent with a whole generation learning everything they know about cars from the misinformation superhighway. I suppose next there'll be some Chinese tachometers coming out that say RPM's on the face. It's revolutions per minute. RPM. Not revolutions per minutes.
The Jalopy Journal
