Has anyone bough a Corvette on Ebay? It looks very dangerous! Unless the car is local and you can go check it out.

I don't know anyone personally who has used eBay to purchase a car, but have read several stories about the process, both good and bad. I found mine in western Pennsylvania via the Collector Cars part of AutoTrader.com and ended up making a deal without having seen the car in person first. The deal was contingent on the car passing an inspection by a known Corvette restorer in the area and my own "kicking of the tires" after arriving at the airport in Pittsburgh. Several of my closest friends thought I'd lost my sanity doing that, but for the most part the transaction was a good one. Drove "The Toy" back to Minnesota without a hitch and have been enjoying it ever since.

No doubt about it, you're taking a big chance buying anything sight unseen. But if you take a few simple precautions and do enough research you'll minimize the risk.

I bought my car through the internet. May not be the same as e-bay but most of the same rules apply. If the car you see on e-bay ( or any other listing ) seems to be what you REALLY want....there are planes, trains, and other forms of transit to get you there to see it. I ended up making two trips to S. Carolina to see the car and really make sure. I did this all in a week and a half. Why, because it was what I wanted and could almost afford. The less than $400.00 for two round trip plane fares was well spent if only for piece of mind. If it is on e-bay, in most cases I bet there will be a reserve price. I bet you can send the seller an e-mail and try to make arrangements to see the car before the final bid will be made. I guess the only two rules are.....you MUST know what you want and you MUST be a serious buyer cause is it going to cost you money up front to see the car.
Anyhow, that is my 2 cents. Good luck in whatever you decide to do.

Hi
I wouldn't buy a car unseen, no way.
Of course, you can ask a forum member from the area to check it up for you, but this put's a lot of strain onto his shoulders as you can never see all problems and for sure not future upcoming problems, and it's always easy to point fingers.
I do agree, best is to do the trip and check up yourself.
You can probably knock off some $$ talking to the seller face to face.
I would even do a oversea trip to the USA to check up a car before I would pay and import it to Europe. Little money spend can save big bucks.
Gunther

I'm not actually look for a car! I just wanted to know if any body has done it . I almost bought a 1970 350 350 that was on www.collectorcartrader.com I contacted the guy the first day the add was listed and asked several questions.In the morning of the second day I sent an email telling him I wanted to send a deposit and hire a mechanic to look at it. he told me that somebody else also called the first day of the add and they were about 2hours away and wanted to go look at it the next day. And told me he let me know how it went. well they bough the car. So sometimes you can't waste a minute.


|UPDATED|4/26/02 4:17:00 PM|/UPDATED|

I may be a bit late on this one....but....

I did buy a car via the internet....but I was able to inspect the car before making the deal. I also looked at several before buying this one.

One BIG warning....pictures posted online can make a car look better. I looked at several that look great online, but were not even a good 20 / 20 car....but I don't think the seller was trying to deceive anyone, just the nature of the beast.

Another "problem" I ran across was....if the asking price was a good price...and the car was in good shape, it usually didn't last long.

FYI....I just sold a 2000 Harley Davidson Electra Glide Ultra Classic via the internet. It sold in a couple of days...but the purchaser did take a drive out to my house to look at the bike in person, even though I had posted 3 pictures in the ad.

The car featured in my sig. is one I found via the internet, and incidently was advertised here on this forum!!! I thought of the internet as a good research/investigative tool, nothing more. I flew from California to Louisianna to check out my car which I found online, was satisfied and drove the beauty all the way home.

In fact the car is still in the for sale section under Eric's70... well it's Erics no longer!!-

My vette was bought off Ebay. We live in New Jersey and the car was in California. My dad did some emailing and phone calls and everything went well. My dad was met at the airport in LA,the car was as advertised he gave Doug the money and drove it back across country.

Before I bought my vette, I was looking in the Corvette Classifieds web page. I found one in Cleveland, Oh that sounded like what I wanted, so I called about it. The lady said that they bought it new, as an anniversary present to her, and they had taken very good care of it. It was an 80 model, with about 36,000 miles on it. I asked her how she rated it on a scale of 1-10, and she said it was a solid 8-8.5. That sounded pretty good, so after calling her long distance about 5-6 times, I decided to go look at it. A good friend of mine has a F450 Diesel truck, and a car hauler, and I hired him to take me from St Louis area to Cleveland to pick it up. With check in hand, we arrived at the home of the owner, and as soon as I walked up to it, I knew I had made a really bad mistake. This vette wasen't even a good solid 3.0 I was kind of P.O. ed But it wouldn't do any good to get mad about it. So we stood and talked for a while, and I told her it wasn't what I wanted and we left. I found out that you can't believe what a person, who is trying to sell, says.
This little ordeal cost me about $300.00 and almost 1200 miles of travel.
Two weeks later, I found the one I have now, 11 miles from My home. A friend of mine from the plant I worked at had owned it for 14 years, and I didn't even know he had it. In the 14 years he owned it, he put 3600 miles on it. He documented everything that he did to it, so I ended up a lot better all the way around.

So be careful about bidding on one from e-bay or anywhere else..
good luck in finding one...
blk79

|UPDATED|5/16/2002 8:55:21 PM|/UPDATED|