Theodore J. Gillam
An idiot’s guide to the thrust of classic car buying
Essential car-buying advice from our Theo… with a curveball thrown in.
Never buy a car in the rain, in a lay-by, in a hurry, or in the dark. Never buy one that reeks of fish or rodent. Never buy a car without seeing its extended family tree or a bona fide doctor’s note. And certainly, never ever buy one completely sight unseen. And that, in a nutshell, is how you buy a car, according to any buyers’ guide worth its salt.
Except that you should essentially disregard all of the above wisdom. Where’s the fun otherwise? Always buy a car with your heart, not your head. Classic car ownership can be painful, trying and exasperating in equal measure, so if you don’t really love the car, things will quickly become quite tedious. Like the cold, dark, damp November evening when you snap a tap off in the head.
The only real rule in buying a classic car is about not getting rooked, rogered or done up like a kipper. That feeling of desolation when you’ve spent big money on a whitewashed donkey wearing an ice-cream cone when you thought you were buying a unicorn, is grisly. But it’s a risk worth taking, unless it involves big bucks.
It’s possible to fall in love with a hitherto unloved car, of course. I bought a Wartburg Tourist and found the initial impression to be suboptimal.
Having mended it, I tried to sell it, to no avail, during which time I drove it and fell in love, keeping it for the best part of a decade. Buying back a car that one loved never seems to work, however. Equally, it’s very easy to fall out of love with a car if it persists in being beastly.
A friend bought an Astra Utility minivan for his museum and said in a magazine article that he believed in preservation rather than restoration, citing a dent in the Astra’s front wing and saying that it probably told a story. I later spoke to the person who sold him the van (he sold me my first Trabant) who said that it was desperately unreliable and, when it broke down for the umpteenth time on the London to Brighton commercial vehicle run, frustration turned to anger, he kicked the wing, then sold it.
All this said, there’s a wild card and that’s the free, or scrap value, car. These are vehicles that either nobody wants anymore; they’re being donated to benefit the recipient or to save the car; or because the car’s so dreadful, free is all it’s worth. Being free or almost free, the donator is absolved from any responsibility in the transaction, so anything that goes wrong after that point is entirely down to the excited new custodian. And it’s easy to go awry.
Welcome to the danger zone
Being free, it’s tempting to over-indulge in repair parts or time because you have more to spend before eventually exceeding the car’s notional value. And being a free car, it’s not necessarily one that you love from the bottom of your heart, so it’s disarmingly easy for the project to be abandoned. I’ve both given and received free cars and the best ones received were where the repairs (for MOTS usually) were time-big yet cost-small, and expectations were low.
The cars that totally confound are the ones that are too expensive even when free. Over 20 years ago, I fell in love with an utterly-decrepit-but-lovely Daimler 104 Sportsman that I'd come across in a scrapyard and was being offered up for a few hundred quid, I think. I spoke to someone in the know who told me to run away as the cost of brakes alone could potentially outstrip the car’s (then) value. Every time I visited, I drooled over its decay and swooned over its potential. Times were hard, so I didn’t buy it, but I still think about it from time to time. Clearly then, the moral of all this is never to say no to a car, especially a free one, and never be sensible. You’re welcome.
‘You really should ignore the experts' advice and buy with your heart instead’