DECEMBER 1, 2012: WHEN DOES IT BECOME TIME TO STOP DREAMING IN TECHNI-COLOR ABOUT YOUR OLD VEHICLE?

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One of the more irritating aspects of the old car hobby is the guy who attaches an insanely high price tag to a rusty piece of junk.

 

Common sense and reality have completely abandoned these clowns and been replaced by delusion and fantasy.

 

They have listed their vehicles at a price where the only conclusion for a buyer is that the seller’s relentless use of hallucinatory drugs, or an untreated mental illness, has influenced his evaluation of a list price.

 

 

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We see a lot of vehicles that are well beyond redemption, so we include them in the Fallen Stars section of our website. This section is the broken dreams segment of MSCC and it shows what happens when rust sleeps even less than a 7-11 store.

 

The vehicles in Fallen Stars are mortally wounded by time, neglect and collisions in some cases. You cannot save these cars and trucks; you can only mourn their passing in the same way that John Wayne mourned the passing of a fallen cowboy comrade in his movies: sincerely and with dignity-and then you move on in life.

 

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Nowhere in this scenario does it say this old car or truck is worth serious money and somebody will indeed pay big money for it. Too often it is a four door sedan that has the makings of a new forest growing through its floorboards and an old engine that was last fired up long before the Beatles were on their way to the Ed Sullivan show. Vehicles like this do not require a restoration; they need a full blown Biblical miracle to come back to life.

 

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We at MSCC love four-door sedans. We take their stories, photos and all relevant information that celebrates the more-doors’ very existence for our monthly Stories section. We at MSCC are also oddballs and we do not apologize for our four door love, but many car guys hate four doors and view them simply as donor cars.

 

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This is the reality of the market faced by sellers who wish to peddle their vehicles. The car may be a mint four sedan that was meticulously maintained by a conscientious former owner like a grandfather, but it has little value to many car guys who would cannibalize it, with zero remorse, in a heartbeat for their 2-door hardtop or convertible project.

 

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Consequently, a rusted-out four-door sedan has even less value in the real world. The problem is that too many sellers have been led down a dead end road of fantasy by mint condition limited production 2-door fully loaded hardtop or drop top factory mates of their rusty piece of junk with a frozen six cylinder engine.

 

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The comparison is similar to a choice between Granny and Elly May from ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ for a romantic partner and we know where that would head for most guys.

 

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The final act of delusion for these clowns is the actual cost of a restoration for their rust buckets. Most of these sellers have no idea about the amount of time, money and effort needed to save a vehicle from stage 4 rust. They delude themselves (and absolutely nobody else) into a very misguided belief that the car or truck “just needs a little work” to be brought back to its former glory.

 

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Nothing could be further from the actual truth but these guys cling to that crazy notion and fight off the shackles of reality in their lives.

 

The final act to this sad story is the rusty pile of junk will never get sold for big money.

 

Instead it will get bundled up neatly in a scrap-yard when the hoarder dies and the next of kin clean up the property.

 

Jim Sutherland

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