I have sold a few of my fleet of old 80's and 90's junkers over the years. Story time!
The first thing I ever sold, was the old 79 f250 farm truck. It was at it's end rust wise, although it looked ok, the bed floor was swiss cheese and every panel had "spots", along with bad valve guides making it hard to start. I had it at the end of my driveway as I wasn't ready to actually advertise it yet, no sign in it. The county guy cutting the ditch grass on a tractor stops to look at it on his way past, asks how much, sold. Never started it for him. He came and picked it up that weekend.
The next thing many years later, was the 1970 mega-heap Mustang. Local guy wanted to hear it run. I did not offer a test drive, it had manual brakes and the top loader 4 speed was really annoying to get out of reverse because the shifter linkage was missing a bushing. He was happy to hear it run, offered like $200 less then what I had in the window, sold.
The third thing is where I decided on how I was going to do things from then on. 1995 F150, was bought for the farm the last year we farmed so it would go on the taxes. 300I6 5 speed. had this for a lot of years, but it was in pretty dang nice shape and had like 90k miles on it. Being the I6, kids didn;t want it. Old guy from the south part of the state comes up to buy it. Wants to test drive it. "Can you drive stick". Sure he says, I drove up here in a stick.
What you need to understand is this truck was a RWD truck, not 4x4, and was an entry level truck we bought with 4k miles on it, because in 95 and 96 Ford was selling these I6 rwd 5 speed "XL" trucks for like half of what the 4x4 XLT was. SO it had a gear box where first gear did 30mph. In a truck. It was fine, the I6 if nothing else was a tractor engine and lived at 400RPM.
Anyway, the guy leaves my driveway(I went along) and it's fine. Get on the highway. Guy proceeds to hold the pedal to the floor in second gear for a mile.
"Pull over"
Why?
I said so, this is my truck. Pull Over. (I am 300lbs of farmer, my voice has.... inflection)
So I turn us around and drive us back home. Guy tells me he just wanted to make sure it wouldn't break down or overheat. I told him this isn;t Milwaukee county this is farm country and people don;t do that **** up here, I wouldn;t sell a lemon to someone.
he bought it, i made him sign a paper saying it was "as is" and I was not liable for anything he did after he left. Then I made him sign my copy too. I wouldn;t have, but I told him if anything happens to it now after the stunt he pulled it's on him. The truck had never gone over 3k RPM until that day. Didn;t need to, 300 I6 is a tractor engine.
After that, no one drives my stuff. I take people for rides. They don;t even go that far unless cash is in their hand. Whiners and tire kickers and people that want to chip at my price by pointing at obvious, or imaginary, flaws are told to get off my property.
You see, even in podunk WI, people are not like they used to be. They will purposefully try to break your ride "to see if it is OK or not". DO you want them to? What if they are idiots and crash the thing? What if they put it into a ditch, sue you for injury and claim the car you were selling as is was defective? Sure it might not hold up in court. Court costs money.
No, people don't drive my stuff anymore. I also don't ask top dollar, and I tell people that and they know it, which is why the tire kickers and price chippers get told to go away.
You aren't a car lot. You don't need to please the customer. It's your stuff until they pay for it.
Make sure to report the car sold to the state if required. Why? So if they try to pull some BS the State knows what happened. That's a recent law in WI, I haven;t sold anything since it went into effect but a friend in town had their car taken out of state to use to run certain things they shouldn't "around town" and it was still in his name. So Next time something goes, I will be reporting it.
