RE: Spider Fraud

["Brian Shorey" <bshorey@domain.elided>]

> I was lucky: I realized what was wrong before I got too far into the car,
> and managed to sell it to a SCCA race driver.  I didn't lose much money on
> the deal, and what I did lose gave me a valuable lesson: don't buy cars
> unseen.  From now on, any Alfa I buy will be detected, selected,
inspected,
> and injected by my own mechanic.

not all alfa owners and digesters are scum ;)

fwiw, i've bought a bunch of alfa's sight unseen, from digesters and
otherwise.  i've gone as far as to mail a bank check to florida so i could
get a title mailed back to me, so i could register one for the drive home.
some have been beaters, but some have been not-so-cheap keepers too (such as
the florida car).

maybe i'm just plain lucky, but i think there's more to it than that.  i ask
a lot of questions up front, partly to get a feel for the car but more
importantly to get a feel for the seller.  if i get an uneasy feeling with
the seller i'll walk away from the deal, regardless of what the car might
be.  also, i try to get service records, pictures, etc.

nothing beats having someone you trust perform an on-site inspection, but
even without a local agent there's still ways to investigate a car remotely.

fwiw,

bs

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