Howdy all..Tim here I was interested in some cars in Staunton IL at a place called Country Classic Cars I have never bought a car sight unseen. I was wondering if there was anyone in the HAMB world that knows this place and their reputation? Also Is there anyone out there that wouldn't mind going to the showroom and taking a few detailed pics and maybe even doing a test drive? At least this way I'd have a better idea of what I was about to buy. If anyone is close and would help please send me a PM so we can set everything up..which cars I am interested in and such. Thanks for any help you can provide. Tim MBL
They do have an assload of cars on their site...and the prices seem fair. I am just a bit apprehensive about buying site unseen. Tim MBL
I don't know, it seems like a bunch of overpriced 4 door junk to me. A buddy of mine sold him a few cars. Every now and then he may get a decent one but mostly it is junk.
I am actually not adverse to getting a 4 door for what I am going to use it for. but thanks for the support. Tim MBL
they have LOTSSSSSS of over price JUNK & what cars are good are even more over priced, a friend took a mid 60's ford 4x4 truck he had there & wanted under $2000 for it & the priced it more then 2times the amount he was asking for it. it sat there for almost 2 years w/o selling it. now i know they need to make a profit but to fuck someone up the ass & then break it off is unforgiveable. my brother bought a 39 dodge from them & paid about $6000 for it & dumped about $3000 into it to make it safe. we had to rebuild all the brake stuff, the complete front end needed rebuilt also & i had to drop the pan just to be sure it wasn't fill w/shit(it had been sitting for 10yrs)i told him NOT to buy the 1st thing he seen & liked. WELLLLLLLLL, personally i think he paid about $4000 too much. hell the 50 plymouth i was selling(buyer backed out) is in better shape then his. on top of all of this the body was dented all over & someone did a worse job the Earl Shives(no offense Earl) would of do w/thier $29.95 paint jobs w/o doing any body work. now he has been driving it for the past 3-4yrs w/o a problem, but then i fixed them all for him. now there are some nice cars there & IF ur willing to pay the price then by all means go for it. Nic is closer then i am (i'm 50 miles from it), but i do have a friend who lives near it that i go see about 1-2times a month. what i would do is tell them ur sending someone out to look at them for u & they will be test driving them also. that way they can get them out of the garages(if they are in one) so whoever doesn't have to wait forever for them to get them out. because some of those cars are are in 3-4-5-6 deep in them sheds. like i said they have LOTSSSS of junk but also have some nice cars, what gets me is the have the balls to charge the price they do on some of the junk, they have a hudson the is literally buried up pass the rocker panels & is falling apart at the seams & they have the guts to say they want $2500 for it .....joe
I walked through there once with a buddy (paid the $2 a head to get in....it was on a roadtrip) EVERY car we saw (even the ones inside in dark barns) had body work you could pic out from 10 feet away. I remember a 70's chopped gm picked with unground welds on it and no glass that they wanted 8K for I would only buy form them if they had the certain model, options, VIN that you are looking for. they had a older lincoln sedan that had no rockers, 4 flat tires, no interior left, missing bottom of doors for $4k!!
I'm just going from the pics on the site...and some of the descriptions...if they are crooks...then thanks for the heads up. I saw on the Web site that they had a 56 Olds 4 door..that seemed reasonably priced from the looks of it...I do see some junk on there but I am not looking for another project right now. thats all I have are projects. Basically I am looking to get into a daily driver that is pretty much restored mechanically and needs only very little on the cosmetic side...I am not adverse to a 4 door because the prices are obviously lower. I am still looking around locally and such...but as you know it is time consuming. Tim MBL
hell they even fucked u on the price to get in, i was there about 2 months ago & they only charge us a $1 each to get in, unless the old lady was drunk or stoned & 4got what the price was.......joe
Save yourself a trip & some headaches.....the stuff is all triple & quadruple overpriced garbage. The cars inside the barns are even only "decent", but they're priced like concours restorations. Example: One time I stopped in and actually slid in while no one was at the gate to try and collect 1.00 to look at the trash....anyway, there was a 57 T-Bird inside one of the sheds, it was just about the waviest bodywork I've ever seen, dry paint, looked like it was squirted with laquer at 90psi from 2 feet on a hot day.....top of the motor was clean & spray bombed to make it look like it may have had a valve grind, the bottom of the motor was all dirty/greasy, old grease caked suspension, old tires, interior looked like it might have been done 20 years ago, dull & pitted chrome & stainless.....$59,000.00. , I'd been finding them in this cond. for $7500.00 to 10K. He's just a storage lot, I don't know how many cars "he" actually owns, but what most of his stuff is are consignments.
Ok... got it...So really they don't have a good rep...That pretty much takes care of it...Thanks for the input! Tim MBL
I once talked to one of the guys there about a '53 Olds that looked pretty good in the picture. I have to say that he WAS honest about the fact that the picture was about 4 years old, the car had been stored outside, and had deteriorated quite a bit since the picture was taken. He sent me some new pictures and the car was a PILE OF CRAP for which they wanted $4000.00. It turned me off about the car but it was cool that the guy was honest about it and saved me a 4 hour trip.
I havent really heard of them as being crooks so much, as to just having cars way over priced. Every time I drive by i see all the same cars there. If you really want me to go look at a car, i will, for gas money and mabye like 20 extra bucks for my time but it probably wouldnt be worth it for you. Nick
Thanks. I will keep that in mind...but eveyone seems to say the same thing...overpriced and it seems that if the pics on the site are out of date...they are also being misrepresented to some degree. Tim MBL
Been thru there on a roadtrip... Functional equivalent of one of them neverending front yard garbage sales. Pick up junk outta folks' trash, stick a price tag on it, and sit it out in the front yard. Every now and then, some city goober stops, pays 3X what the useless POS is worth. 'Hey Edna - we done pulled the wool over another one of them got-danged city slickers!' Betcha 80% of their sales are internet sight-unseen. Refer to sentence above.
Made the mistake of road-tripping there once. Every single vehicle there was a complete POS, and at least 4x the reasonable price. Example: '62 Chebby 3/4 ton pickup with a frozen 6 banger, no rockers, floor and bed rusted thru, flat tires. Asking $2500. There must be a whole lotta idiots in the world for that place to stay in business.
Are you sure you paid $2 a head??? I go there often and for as long as I have visited there have only had to pay $1/head. As to the junk.... a good majority of the cars there are on consignment. Would you like Country Classic Cars to take responsibility for what consignors want for their cars? My buddy owns a car dealership across the river, and a growing trend seems to be for people to consign their cars and assign extremely high prices to get storage through the winter. They know their car won't sell, but they get to keep it indoors for the winter and pay nothing.
My brother-in-law is a repeat costumer there, he has found some great deals. I don't know if the car you are talking about is actually their car or not, but I do know some of their consignors are pretty crazy in pricing, but that isn't their fault. They price their cars reasonably.
They bought some cars off of my buddy. Selling price of each of them was around 500 bucks, which was reasonable but a few hundred less of what he could have got if he really tried on his own. CCC price for the same cars, $2500 and up. A 5x markup on a car only worth $1000 tops.
Been there a couple times. Last time had a friend with me, told him I have hauled off better cars than ones setting outside. They had a 46 ford coupe that looked decent for 12,500. Seen it at a swap meet a few months later for sale. The guy said he was the one that consigned it there. He wanted like 9000.00 and was told they wanted to make like 500-1000. Later found they had jacked it up 3500.00.
what about room to negotiate or come down? If they advertise like everyone says they do, that costs a lot of money to advertise each car indvidually. In addition, their employees spend time and money working with the cars. They should get something. If the owner of the coupe didn't want to 'pay' for someone else to sell their car, then they ought to sell it themself. QUOTE=Crestliner]Been there a couple times. Last time had a friend with me, told him I have hauled off better cars than ones setting outside. They had a 46 ford coupe that looked decent for 12,500. Seen it at a swap meet a few months later for sale. The guy said he was the one that consigned it there. He wanted like 9000.00 and was told they wanted to make like 500-1000. Later found they had jacked it up 3500.00.[/QUOTE]
I wasn't complaining about the price. It was the fack they told the owner they only wanted to make 500-1000 and the jacke it up 3500. How many business are going to come down 2500 on a 12500 car, especially if your using other peoples money.
I'm actually a repeat customer. I've only consigned one car there, though. The people there clearly told me that they would make at least $500 off of my car. That was fine with me, I did not want the headache of trying to sell it myself. In my experience they have been honest and great to deal with. It seems most of the negative comments posted by others are by people who have not had direct dealings with this place. They are still in business for a reason...and the reason is not that they are crooks! If anyone is interested in a car from these peole I would highly recommend it, or try to get you in touch with some other costumers that have bought at least one care from these people.
Who knows how to trace ISP addresses? I'd be willing to bet that 65Chevelle, Lazeboy, and Jerry66 are all the same guy, probably the owner of the place trying to make a good name for themselves. I could be wrong... If I'm right, it's a bullshit way to defend yourself, pretending to be your customers and saying nice things about your business. Why not just say "I'm the owner and blah, blah, blah." That'd get a lot more respect from me. So who can check on this for me? It would be interesting to see.
My buddy owns a car dealership across the river, and a growing trend seems to be for people to consign their cars and assign extremely high prices to get storage through the winter. They know their car won't sell, but they get to keep it indoors for the winter and pay nothing. that doesn't seem likely, even if you're 'consigning' a car at these places, especially an indoor location, you'll be paying a monthly fee to do so. i'd be surprised if they didn't make more from the monthly fees than any actual commissions. i had a car at one of these places, $75 a month, and i found out the asking price was $10,000, when i wanted $6500...
Then: Lazeboy says : My brother-in-law is a repeat costumer there, he has found some great deals. I don't know if the car you are talking about is actually their car or not, but I do know some of their consignors are pretty crazy in pricing, but that isn't their fault. They price their cars reasonably. =========== I call bullshit. What two supposedly completely different people come on the same thread, defending the same place, & call customers, "costumers". It seems they're illiterate at CCC also. Obviously it's someone who cares enough to try and come on here and defend the place, which are usually the owners.
I've driven through there many, many times on trips to see my folks up in Springfield, IL. (They used to not charge the $1 entrance fee.) I've not really had any interaction with the guys that run the place, so I can't say either way on the "crook" issue, but I can reinforce the overpriced bit. In a lot of cases, it's WAY overpriced. I'll bet some of those cars have been sitting there for every bit of ten years, and I'd be surprised if the price has changed at all. That said, one of the women that works at the "antique" (read: miscellaneous and sometimes cool stuff) shop did tell me that the majority of the cars are on consignment, so the owner of the vehicle sets the price. It can be a fun diversion if you are passing by there, but I wouldn't count on getting any bargains if you're looking to buy.
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