Projects 1960 Cadillac - How much are these things going for, anyway?

Hey, Abomination, maybe I can give you some help selling the hardtop. I sell a lot of old cars for estates when people die, and I've had lots of years to figure out what works, what attracts serious buyers, and what just attracts time wasters. Here's some advice:

I don't know where you are offering it, but for a specialized car, you need to advertise in a way that exposes the car to a nationwide market. There are limited potential buyers in your local area. There are lots more who might be happy to drive halfway across the country for the right car. Find them. Ebay works much better that way than Craigslist. The Scottsdale auctions get top dollar because they expose the cars to bidders nationwide. You can do something similar using ebay, the cl***ifieds here, at Hemmings, and using Craigslist for the nearby cities: Denver, St.L, Dallas, Chicago, Indy.

In order to interest those buyers around the country, you need to give them MUCH more information. In your early posts in this thread, you mentioned "typical rust" and "crunchy floors." Those terms aren't usefully descriptive. What kind of rust is typical for a car in Arizona is very different for one in Wisconsin. What is typical in St Louis is different from what's typical in KC. Don't make people guess what "typical" means when YOU use the word. Give them more complete and more useful descriptions, and better yet, photos to illustrate everything you describe, both the good, the bad and the ugly.

AS they consider a purchase, some potential buyers will wonder what needs to be replaced and repaired to make the car into the perfect 100 point show-winning restoration they are dreaming of. Others will wonder if the rust is so bad that they can't patch it over with some bondo and keep their feet dry while they're driving in the rain. Both those potential buyers need far more information to get their interest. Photographs of the rusty areas, with good lighting, will give them much more information about the car's current condition, information they can use to decide if a trip to KC is wise.

For that matter, photographs in general are absolutely imperative to sell a project. When this thread first started, someone asked you for more photos. You replied with too few, and the photos you posted are not nearly good enough to give anyone a good impression of the car. I myself sat here agreeing that I'd like to see photos, but the ones you posted did utterly nothing to make me want to take on your project.

Push it off that trailer. People want to see the car in the photos, not the trailer. Figure twenty photos inside the car, twenty more outside, and twenty more split between under the hood and under the car. Show them clear photos of the rust, every damaged panel on the car, and ***ure them there is NO MORE RUST and no more damage than what they see in the photos and read in your description. If you don't they will imagine horrible missing rusty sills and floors, holes in the firewall and the trunk, and wonder how much damage you are hiding. Minimizing bad features of a car wastes your time. If someone comes to look and they find more rust than you described, or other problems you didn't mention, they probably won't buy the car, and they will leave pissed because you wasted their time as well as yours. Long, tedious, thorough, and most importantly, obviously honest descriptions of every part and every system on the car will bring the real buyers out. Vague descriptions will only bring you lowballers who won't even come look at the car unless you agree over the phone to sell it for peanuts. They are a waste of your time. ( I currently have a client's car advertised on the local Craigslist, and I was straight up honest about every negative feature of the car, including the cigarette smell inside. I photographed every scratch, and the cigarette burn in the driver's seat. I don't want to waste time dragging someone over for a test drive and find them pissed because the car stinks. TELL them it stinks. then the people who care about the smell won't come and waste your time or theirs own.)

As other people here have advised, the running gear you described is only valuable if you can demonstrate that it runs and operates. Wishful thinking, "All it needs is . . ." is not helpful in convincing people to make a long trip to look at a project car. A non-running car is a non-running car, no matter how easy you imagine it will be to get it running again. A non-running car with incorrect engine and ****** is worth even less. A lot of people don't care about the incorrect parts, but they do care if those parts are any good. Unless you can demonstrate that the engine runs, the ****** works, and the car is driveable, a potential buyer with any intelligence will ***ume that all those parts are valueless, and they will calculate the cost of replacement engines, brakes, and trannies into the numbers they are crunching in their heads when they make an offer. Unless the car is running, I can't even ***ume safely that the engine and ****** are rebuildable cores, let alone useful as is.

Just some food for thought.

Good luck!

 

Lots of twins on here!

I always act astonished and ask my girls (they turned 11 a few months back) what those things are at the end of their arms. They roll their eyes and say, "Um... hands." Then I gasp and say I bet they could hold things in those hands that help them do other things, and that they should do do those things right now! Many times, they DO! LOL!

Yeah, I could do more for them, but like I tell them, I HAD children. I'm raising ADULTS. We've made them do almost everything we could since they were small, because I'll be damned if my girls are some kind of princess that always needs a man around to do things for them, like cut their steak or change a light bulb. Thus far, it's worked out pretty damned good!

I have no doubt they'll be completely able to take care of some nice, but inept, guy someday.

God help me...

~Jason

 

I'm actually taking that to heart. I already have pictures of about all the visible ugly, and am working on the interior.

I figured I may as well show folks what it is.

Meanwhile, I've listed it in a bunch of places (Here, Facebook, etc as well as have had a friend list it in eBay in Europe), and have offered it to a select few to spread the word.

I'm heading to vacation in a day. When I get back, I've got to get on it!

~Jason

 

hey abomination....I sent you a PM about the cadillac.