I ran into a man who is becoming my business partner. He has the funds and know-how as far as running a business and purchasing cars while I can tell him which cars are worth buying to fix and re-sell. I will also be fixing all of these cars. The plan is to have 3 or 4 cars for sale at all times.
This shop will not be a typical shop. I will personally attend to each car as if my mother was buying it. This way the customer gets a good quality vehicle even though it's "old." We will mainly deal in 1990s or older vehicles. It's not worth your hassle to get a new car that's actually worse. For example, my 1996 Lexus LS400 easily beats my partner's 2012 Mercedes E320 in speed. While that's actually in the same class - luxury - I suppose the E is for "economy?" But I never in a million years thought my car was faster until I gave him a little ride and he told me. You can get one from us for $1.5-2k in the future among other cars.
Anyway, it gets a little better mileage. The Mercedes, that is. It's louder, stiffer, slower, revs lower, is not a reliable Toyota (problems are coming up... 130k miles while my Lexus has 230k that feels like 75k), and is showing signs of electrical problems starting.
The Mercedes not only lacks traction control (!!) but it also has no overdrive and you can't shift manually if you want. Man, in the Lexus if you go through the gears starting at "L" (1st) and shift around 5,000 rpms, every shift will throw you back in your seats and because it has traction control (that can be turned off with a button), and it doesn't lose grip unless it's wet. The Mercedes likes to spin its tires instead of taking off (although I explained to my good friend how to prevent that).
There's a lot more things like the price difference. $25,000 for the Mercedes, $1,500 for the LS400 that made him consider selling his car now.
So here's my point. Cars reached peak quality all around the 1990s. They were still being built to last a long time and they were just new enough to have your ABS, traction control, OBDII ports, etc. Essentially, most cars past the year 2000 started being made to last about 180-200,000 miles. The companies realized they can't make money if people keep their cars for years!
They have too many electronics and depend on the ECU too much. Something small goes wrong and suddenly the car won't drive because the ECU is missing an "integral" input which could be coming from a bad sensor. If not for that, yeah your engine might run worse or whatever but you get a code, find out what the problem is, and fix it for cheap.
If you put $5,000 into a Lexus LS400, not only would it be decked out completely but it would be doing 400hp at 8 PSI, completely rocking most cars really. The car puts horsepower to the ground especially with traction control on. Although it is fun off (yes you can turn it on and off), you spin the tires so easy and obviously would use it for drifting. I had another thought. I was wondering why it seems to have such good grip. Well my car is lowered just a little in the back, putting more weight on the rear tires!
This is one of many choices of cars, many sports and luxury cars that last to 400-500,000 miles if simply maintained. So it never makes sense to buy a new car unless you really want something specific like an Alfa Romeo Competizione...
I'll pick one up in three years for $4,000. Oops did I say that? Yeah, Alfas depreciate extremely fast. As soon as you buy a new Giulia (beautiful car), you loose $7,000 immediately because now it's 'used.' Just by buying it.
It makes more sense to rebuild older, quality cars. You will be able to buy various cars of ours for cheap prices, in line with the website's $1-3,000 theme. But these will be fully inspected, fixed, and possibly painted before they go. This way you know that you have a reliable car. Buy one from Craigslist for the same price and unless you know, you're risking it. The tranny or something could blow in 6 months.
So I am extremely excited for 2019 because I knew it would be better but I had no idea I would get an opportunity like this. Hopefully my wife can stop working and just clean the house in a nurse's outfit for me.
Don't worry, I'm not being misogynistic or whatever it's called - that's what she wants to do. I love my wife.
So guys send me your good lucks and prayers so this goes well!
- Rokas K.
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