auto_editor

Found a Craigslist "free" ad that reads:

"1984 cutlass with damage to the back

The car is a 84 four door cutlass and it looks like someone has backed into a pole or something and mess the back up. It has over 300k miles and is not really worth anything."

Sure, I get that a 1984 Cutlass sedan isn't a 442 or anything, but I found it interesting that in today's 99 cent-eBay-auctions world that ANY car ends up being free.

Places around here will give you scrap prices, if nothing else. I, of course, am doing what I was taught in Journalism School--latching onto minutiae and running with it without corroboration--but this felt like a philosophical question more than a financial one.

I've found that the general supply of "free" cars has dried up, or at least the supply of cars you'd WANT has. Now that every "friend of a friend" has Craigslist or eBay to unload their cars--instead of "You know about cars, right?" give-aways--you have to hang vulture-like outside the garages of elderly neighbors to get decent deals on desirable cars.

(Kidding. Mostly.)

I had 15 cars in High School, with never fewer than two or three at a time. When you were discovered to be a "car geek," every "My aunt died", "My son's in prison", "I hate the color", "It won't start", etc., story meant there was a car there just for the asking.

Now you have to hang vulture-like on Craigslist to PAY for a car! Oh, technology, you've let me down. You make it so hard to take advantage of the car-ignorant...

Indy_68_S

Scrap prices aren't that great. For some cars/locations, when you figure the time & effort needed to get it to the scrapper, it does become truly worthless....or even may cost to get it removed. Its cheaper/easier to give it away... "Just get it outta here". 'Free' is just leveraging someone else's perceived value of the car to get it gone.

I'm with you on the loss of 'free' or nearly so running cars.

I too had many 'cheap' cars in my H.S. & post H.S. years (early/mid '80s). Some of them...

- '76 Malibu wagon for free from a family member. 160+K mi on it. A little rust & int was very worn, but ran strong/drove great. Great hauler
- '80 Corolla for free. Had like 200K mi & was pretty beat for a 5-ish y/o car. Ran & drove OK
- '69.5 Karmann Ghia for $35 (actually traded 5 cases of 'Bud for it!). 1800cc / 2bbl hot rod motor. Needed a few things. Invested $75.. Drove for 6 mos. It was a blast to drive! Crashed bad & sold for $50 !

joe_padavano

I've got several free cars. My 86 Caprice wagon was free. The previous owner was moving, needed to get rid of it, and none of the donation places would take it. He was going to pay someone to haul it off. It had a rebuilt 307 and 200-4R. I figured that the 12" front brakes and spindles alone were worth taking it. I drove that car for two years until the 200-4R puked. Now it's a donor car for my 84 Custom Cruiser (that I got for $250).

I also have a 1990 Grand Am with a Quad 4 that I got for free. I got it for the Q4 (there's a track roadster project in there somewhere) but for now it's a nice, if ugly, backup and winter driver.

I got a 1978 El Camino rolling shell for free. Usual rust, which is why it's not cost effective to fix it, but the frame is NOT rusted. I'm on the lookout for a G-body Cutlass Cruiser wagon to donate sheet metal to the Elco. One of the 403s currently holding down my barn goes into that project.

I even got a 1987 Corolla FX 5spd for free. Hold the cards and letters, this is a NUMMI car, built in the same Fremont, CA plant as my 66 442, so they're siblings. I let my kid have it as his first car. We dropped in a 4AGE DOHC motor and he had fun at the track with it (once we added nitrous).

I currently have a 1986 325es BMW that I got for $200. There's a spare Northstar laying around.....

Note that except for the Caprice, none of these show up in the sig line either. THIS is why I live on a farm.