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At Home with Marni: Just give me the keys

22.05.12

Buying a car is like buying a for nothing: a series of high expectations dashed by plummeting disappointments.

That decked-out sports car you've pinned your will to and pictured yourself in has been in so many accidents, you learn from Carfax, that it needs regular chiropractor visits.

The same with the attractive house that looked so fetching online you'd already begun mentally arranging your household goods in it only to discover it sits on a four-lane highway next to a prison.

The whole process is heartbreaking, like falling in predilection with a charming alcoholic.

The ad for the silver, used Jeep Liberty lured my 16-year-old daughter and me across borough to a car lot smaller than a country gas station. It was after 5 p.m. on a Saturday, and the gate was locked. We peered through the tie-link fence and didn't see one Jeep.

"Another bait-and-switch," I grumble. We're both identification the defeat of an abusive weekend of shopping for her first car. I call the number painted on the corrugated metal erection.

"That Jeep you're advertising, you still have it?"

"Yes," a man says.

"I'm at your lot and don't see it."

"It's down the street."

"I've heard that before," I say rudely.

"Excuse me?" I pay attention to a sincere and vaguely insulted tone in his voice.

I pause.

The optimist in me, a Labrador-like vivacity that rests between my heart and lungs, wakes up. I start over. "Please understand," I say. "My daughter and I have been shopping for inured to cars all day. We've met cranks and creeps and criminals."

"I'm sorry. It's bad out there." He guides us to the lot with the Jeep, less than a mile away. My daughter's eyes augment. He confirms the low price, then says, "But I have a dealer who's interested."

"Well, let him have it," I say.

My daughter shoots me an inauspicious glare. "I'm not rushing into this," I say, muting the phone. "Besides I'm suspicious of the low price."

Then I learn I'm dealing with a wholesaler. This guy buys cars at auctions, mostly repos and end-of-rent out-vehicles, and sells them to dealers all over the country, which explains why his cars are often $2,000 below retail.

I mound him our criteria and price range, then, trying to sound more stable than I am, ask almost desperately: "Would you help us?"

The next day, the Jeep is sold to the exchange. My daughter is inconsolable. (Rule No. 1 Don't get emotional.) He assures us he'll find her a car.

Over the next week he calls with contenders, which my daughter rules out for fall short of of cuteness. Then, a week later, he has another Jeep Liberty, white and even "cuter." With tax and accredit, the out-the-door price is still well below Blue Book.

"Don't fall in love," I tell my daughter as she takes it for a drag. "We need an inspection."

"Too late," she says.

I take it to a mechanic, who should have been a priest. He gives the car his profit.

I text my daughter a thumbs-up emoticon, and write a check for the price he quoted. No haggling, no merchant fees. I want to kiss this man. He hands me the keys, which my daughter now swings time after time, wearing a smile as wide as her new bumpers.

Sealing the deal

Buying a organization or car are the two most expensive purchases most people make, says Bill Goldberg, president of Auto Advisors, a car message and buying service. Yet buyers make costly mistakes they could avoid. Here are his tips for driving home ground a deal:

Line up financing. Before you go shopping, get preapproved for a loan by a reputable lender or commendation union. Know what you can afford, before you get bamboozled into accepting the salesperson's financing, which nine out of 10 buyers do. "A trifling effort and inconvenience up front can save a lot of money," he says.

Don't disclose your monthly payment. That's the touch of death. Focus on the price. "The minute you reveal your ideal payment, they'll business all kinds of financing tricks to back into that number and finance you into your grave."

Get an inspection. Once your found your dwelling-place or car and agreed on a price, the work isn't done. You need to get an inspection from an independent, certified family inspector or mechanic. Be prepared to walk away if something big turns up.

Get it in writing. An email succession is much better than a dialogue when hammering out details and holding salespeople accountable.

Be wary of upgrades. Whether granite counters or fancy wheels, you can often do better buying them yourself after the trade. Goldberg says his $89 Garmin works better than any $2,000 steersmanship system.

Don't get in a pickle. Many buyers need to unload a home or car before they buy another. If you buy a home contingent on the jumble sale of your home or depending on a trade-in, you lose buying leverage. The ideal caste is to buy with no baggage, so you control the timing and the shots.

Act like a parent. Because I wasn't picturing myself driving down the track in this shiny vehicle, I could focus on what really mattered: safety, mileage, longevity and bounty. For a change, I could take a back seat and behave like a grown-up, not a teenager.

Syndicated columnist and keynoter Marni Jameson is the author of "House of Havoc" and "The House Always Wins" (Da Capo Urge). Contact her through www.marnijameson.com .

Source: San Jose Mercury News

One man's tiny addiction

22.05.12

HUDSON - Unreserved Wojnarowski and his 1940s polka band faded into musical history fancy ago. But the 1948 Flxible Clipper tour bus that ferried them around still exists (in running prepare, no less) thanks to Charles Gould, a Newton lawyer whose passion for collecting origin vehicles is exceeded only by his reluctance to part with them.

Three years ago, Gould, 55, got a call from an Auburn man expectations to sell the Clipper, which had been sitting beside his house for 20 rust-inducing years. Gould demurred. He mostly collects European-made microcars from the ’50s and ’60s. The man persisted. “He said he knew I ran an orphanage for unloved vehicles,’’ recalls Gould, who agreed to look at the bus anyway.

After tinkering with the apparatus for 90 minutes, Gould fired it up, then drove the bus around shouting, “It’s spirited!’’ The Clipper is now parked in one of two Hudson warehouses containing Gould’s astonishing collection, which has grown to comprise nearly 100 vintage cars supplementary dozens more motorcycles, sidecars, trailers, and other rarities.

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How and why Gould bought that bus expose what makes him such an unusual collector. He values a vehicle for its historical or mechanical significance, not because it fills a niche in his collection or promises to grow in resale value. He puts old vehicles back on the approach himself (Gould works on them all, aided by a few car-loving friends) and relishes the hunt that uncovers these cars and restores them to person. And he loves telling stories - oh, the stories - behind each prized find.

“I’ve got a honest addiction,’’ Gould admits on a walking tour of his gleaning. “My focus is definitely microcars, but I don’t limit myself. If something interests me and the amount is reasonable, it comes into my collection.’’ He rarely sells them, except to funds other acquisitions. “Although I keep saying I’m going to,’’ Gould says with a off.

At any given time, Gould keeps nearly two dozen vintage cars registered, insured, and roadworthy. A behaviour are parked at his Newton home, keeping company with the Goulds’ relations cars, a Chrysler minivan and Dodge truck. Several times a year he and his helpmeet, Nancy, invite schoolchildren over for a hands-on automotive history lesson.

In Hudson, where he hopes to shape a vintage car museum someday, Gould jams the rest of his collection into 8,250 six-sided feet of garage space. Pointing to a favorite, a 1962 Amphicar, his eyes imperceptible up. Manufactured in Germany, it has twin propellers and was the first nonmilitary mass-produced amphibious car. The Goulds and their two daughters have been known to sink it into the Charles River, drawing approving quacks from passing duck boats.

“When we started, nobody imperturbable microcars,’’ Gould says. “People gave them to us, or sold them for $500. They’re a lot more prized today.’’ Still, he says, “This is not a mellow man’s hobby, even though most people assume it is.’’

Notwithstanding Gould’s quick-witted eye for a bargain, some of these cars do fetch hefty sums on the collectors’ market-place. While some sell for $2,000 to $5,000, he says, others go for considerably more. A well-preserved model of one rare microcar he owns, for case in point, a 1964 Peel Trident, recently sold at auction for more than $46,000.

The oldest car in Gould’s sensible, a 1916 Mercer Model 22-72 touring car, was bought at auction 34 years ago, when Gould mostly unperturbed vintage Corvettes and Jaguars. That phase did not last long.

As Gould tells it, he attended too many car shows where prizes went to very restored specimens, not to cars that showed off their peculiar quirks and pedigrees. He saw too many collectors who paid others to make restitution their cars for them, and who flipped out if someone wanted to touch their cars or, heaven forbid, sit in them.

Gould loves nothing more than packing encyclopaedic-eyed youngsters into one of his microcars and taking them for a spin. He’s concerned that today’s Xbox genesis will grow up with no appreciation for automotive history. The more they see and hear about these cars in their original demand, he reasons, the more likely they are to share a little of his passion.

“Antique cars are the only antiques we enterprising perfect,’’ says Gould, ruefully. “We’d never do that to a painting or in keeping snap of furniture. Most of my cars are not restored. If they have scratches or dents, every one tells a chapter of that car’s 50 years.’’

As Gould sold off his ’Vettes and Jags, he began concentrating on microcars, a species born in postwar Europe. Most often categorized by locomotive size (less than 500 cubic centimeters, or cc, displacement), they often relied on aircraft or motorcycle engineering for their undertaking. The tiniest car currently in his collection is the Peel Trident. Also known as a bubble car, it stands 72 inches dream of and 42 inches wide, weighs less than 200 pounds, and is the smallest 2-seater car ever made. Its marketing motto: “It’s almost cheaper than walking.’’

Buying cars at auction is only one of Gould’s strategies. For years, the Goulds drove around New England like a span of automotive Indiana Joneses, sniffing out abandoned cars stowed in barns, garages, and basements. One rare find, a 1959 Auto Bloc coupe (forerunner of the Audi), was hiding under a tarp in a Waltham garage. Gould bought it for $400.

Unfortunately, he says, online sleuthing has changed the deception, and not for the better.

“I had much more fun finding barn cars than on an Internet search,’’ he says. “There was much less rake-off rich involved, much less competition. People used to say we were really lucky, but it wasn’t chances. It was hard work.’’

Calling herself her husband’s “enabler,’’ Nancy Gould says she knew they were in for the hanker haul when they bought their first microcar, a BMW Isetta, 25 years ago. For the past 16 years, they have hosted an annual microcar formality in Newton. Their daughters, 15 and 13, are even more enthusiastic than their mother. “They don’t deficiency us to sell anything, ever,’’ she says.

Growing up in Clinton, Gould wasn’t even into his teens when he began buying and restoring old cars. He bought his first fixer-characters upper class when he was 9, a 1954 Chevy Bel Air that cost him $20. Three years later, he purchased a dozen excess military Jeeps and restored them to running condition, selling off several to pay off a $2,000 bank allow he had taken out, co-signed by his father. A lawyer and judge by profession, his father had been skeptical at first of his son’s wheeling and dealing, Gould says. But after 11-year-old Charles sold a 1937 Buick for a systematic profit, “My father was big enough to say he was sorry. Then he introduced me to his banker.’’

By the together Gould could legally drive, he was squiring dates around in one of several classic Corvettes he owned. Good-looking cool way to go through high school.

Decades of collecting have built Gould a worldwide network of sources. One Australian pal drove a thousand miles to see a 1959 Goggomobil Clasp Dart that Gould coveted. After Gould decided the car was too expensive to ship, his beau came up with another plan: Buy a whole batch of vintage vehicles and pack them into one huge container, thereby allowing Gould to discharge his costs. By selling several cars to other collectors, he might even come out ahead.

“It was like vernissage the best Christmas present ever,’’ he says, of the day the container arrived. How many did he close at hand up selling? “Not a single one,’’ he says chuckling, as if the mystery were purely rhetorical.

Claiming he has never calculated the collection’s worth, Gould insists that’s beside the point anyway. Years ago, he says, friends urged him to turn his hobby into his livelihood. Gould declined, preferring to work law and keep his hobby just that. A graduate of Suffolk Law School, Gould has downsized his application in recent years and now works by himself, specializing in litigation-avoidance strategies for modest-business owners.

“If you end up working at something you’re truly passionate about, you can liquidate that passion pretty quickly,’’ he says, taking a visitant for a spin in a 1963 Fiat Multipla, originally used as a Swiss drive. As the meter ticks past 92 francs, he smiles and adds, “My opinion is, if I lose a little money on these cars, at least I had some fun. And you can’t say that about your mutual funds.’’

Source: The Boston Globe