You finally find the car of your dreams. It’s far away, as they always are, you emailed the seller and asked every pertinent question in that ‘Mercedes Buyer’s Guide’ book of yours, you’ve even  requested additional photos from him and you’re finally ready to make a deal. It’s too far away so maybe you can’t look at the car in person, but you get a good feeling about the car and you think you know enough about it to make an educated purchase.  You make the call. You ask more questions about the car just to make sure it’s what you want and develop a good feeling about the seller. He’s nice, he’s friendly and  he seems honest.

But he refuses to sell you the car.

What?

That’s right. He just told you he would rather sell the car locally because of all the scams he’s heard about.

Welcome to the new American private seller. Fear of being defrauded has taken over logic and is making it terribly difficult for savvy internet buyers to make a deal. Especially if you are not American. This is not just isolated, but widespread, permeating fear in nearly every city in the United States.

What is the cause of this? Is there a legitimate reason for this?

The answer is not simple, but it spans several years back with the advent of the Nigerian Scam. You know, the old scam where a ‘Dr. Smith’ wants to send you too much money for your car by way of official cashier’s check and asks that you send the overpayment to him in Niger via Western Union? I’m sure you’ve heard of it by now. Everyone has. This is by now nearly totally defunct and inoperable, simply because it’s so well known throughout the world. To my knowledge, there is no longer any current widespread scam going on related to vehicle sales…. the used car salesperson is a completely different story, more about that another day.  So why does this still linger? I think the answer to this is because not everybody knows how the scam worked. In mainstream media the average American mind might have simply registered  something along these lines:

car, cashier’s check, scam, far away buyer, something about Niger

Which translates to: When I sell my car don’t take cashier’s checks and don’t sell to anyone I can’t see in person

The ‘cashier’s check‘ part is phasing out and being replaced simply by ” Don’t sell to anyone I can’t see in person”

I have also noticed the increasing usage of phrases like: ‘ avoid scams and fraud by dealing locally’ on classified websites like Craigslist. This is completely unwarranted as you will see below.

For all of you still in this latest monetary-destructive mindset I would like to set the record straight. First of all, I am a U.S. citizen and have been in the classic car business since 1990. I have sold hundreds upon hundreds of many times very expensive cars to buyers all over the world and I have never been the victim of a scam relating to cars… My laptop being stolen in the Budapest train station  is another story…

Here is my best advise for selling your car: sell it and get paid! To me it doesn’t matter who pays me, which country s/he is from, or what kind of accent this person has. I really don’t even care if s/he is from Niger or Zimbabwe. If the money clears and I can take the cash out of the bank then I have successfully sold the car. It’s as simple as that.

In fact, the fear (for good cause) should come from the buyer, not the seller. The buyer is basically sending you money in good faith and hopes he gets what you are describing. And since you won’t provide the buyer the title until the funds are cleared, this means he has to have faith that you will eventually give him some form of ownership documents. It’s a leap of faith and many people are nervous about it, for good reason, but they still buy the car. Millions of cars in America and Europe have been sold this way since 1999 whilst almost no buyer scams (not including the Nigerian Scam) have been reported. However, seller scams are well-documented and are on the rise. Flipping back the odometer, switching VIN numbers, juicing up internet descriptions and photos,’ losing the title’,  you name it.

Now I want to make some points why it’s even more convenient, safer and less time consuming to sell to an out-of-state or international buyer versus a local private party:

Why it’s safer to sell a car overseas:

• In 99% of the cases your buyer will send you funds via traditional bank to bank wire transfer. This is by far the safest way to send money (ask your bank) since once the money posts to your account it is 100% non-retractable. In other words, once the buyer wires you the money it’s gone…for him. There is absolutely nothing he can do about it, less walking into your bank and robbing it, but even then you have FDIC insurance. This is important when selling a car because once you close a deal and he takes his car home you don’t risk him ‘retracting’ the money if he wrecks the car. A traditional wire transfer withing the U.S. takes about 24 business hours to post to your account while an international wire takes 2-3 business days. Either way, and no matter where the wire is sent from, your money is clear once it hits your account. You can take it out and buy gold with it. Now, just to be clear, if you are offered a cashier’s check from anyone outside the U.S. you should know it’s a scam. The cashier’s check commonality is pretty much exclusive to the U.S.. Europeans pay for big ticket goods almost exclusively by cash-in-person or bank wire. Checks are unheard of.

• Dramatically reduces your risk of frivolous lawsuits. Used car sales lawsuits are big business and AS-IS disclosures usually don’t get the seller very far in court. Compared to most other countries, Americans are pretty sue-happy. And some just flat out make it a business, and one of those business targets are used car sellers. You do your best to describe your car, post thirty photos and you get a buyer. Well, the buyer drives the car to his home in our city and he get’s ‘buyer’s remorse’ and decides he wants you to buy it back. You refuse. A deal is a deal, right? He calls up his buddy mechanic and has him literally pick the car apart. Thousands of mechanical wear and tear items are now unaccounted for in your newspaper description. He’s close to you and it’s easy for him to call up his buddy attorney and open a case. You will probably win, but only after spending thousands of dollars and dozens of hours defending yourself in court. The fact that your buyer is far away from you vastly decreases the chance  a frivolous kind of person will pursue a lawsuit outside his own state. And frivolous lawsuits coming from outside the country is just a silly idea. It would not happen.

• When selling to a local buyer you risk taking counterfeit cash, fake cashier’s checks, and even being harmed on a test drive. Who pays for the damage if the potential buyer crashes your car? You do! Who pays for the loss if you deposit a fake cashier’s check? You do! Then you have to deal with a likely complete stranger entering your home to complete the transaction. Also, if your  buyer pays with cash, now you have to take that cash to your bank and deposit it. Under the Patriot Act, and new money laundering laws, banks are on the lookout for customers with large sums of cash. If it’s over $10,000 it must be reported to the IRS. If you ‘structure your deposit’ (Google: stuctured deposits) then this is another crime in itself. A felony, in most states.

Why it’s more convenient to sell a car overseas:

• How many times have you gotten a call and the local potential buyer wants you to meet him halfway? Or he wants to take the car home to show his wife? Overseas or out of state buyers are simply too far away to see and drive your car. You are effectively avoiding tire kickers, kids who want to just drive a fast car, and penniless serial car dreamers who always seem to know it all. However, at times an overseas buyer will want a professional pre-purchase inspection (PPI). This can be accomplished at your local repair shop or by mobile inspection companies like www.carchex.com or SGS. If the buyer requests a PPI simply make sure he pays for the service beforehand. Verify with the inspection company or shop that the bill has been paid in full. PPIs take about 1-2 hours of your time and you may even learn a thing or two about your car.

• After you settle a deal with your buyer he will arrange shipping. Generally just a few days after your car is paid in full the transport company will contact you usually 24-48 hours before they arrive and will generally load the car from your home. If you have a strict HOA or a narrow neighborhood street you can meet them at your local grocery outlet or Walmart.

• If your buyer is out of state it’s generally a good idea to mail the title and bill of sale immediately after funds have cleared. If the buyer is overseas, give the title to the auto transport company when they come, they’ll need it for customs clearance out of the U.S. and into the overseas port.

• That’s about it. Very easy stuff here.

Some guidance for selling to a local private party:

If you do end up with a local buyer, remembering a few things will save you potential problems:

1. Never, ever give the title or car to the buyer unless funds are 100% clear. I am referring more specifically to common cashier’s checks. Let’s say a seemingly nice person comes and gives you a perfectly good cashier’s check. You even call the issuing bank to verify it. He drives home and on the way the engine blows up. All he has to do is call his bank and report the check was lost, stolen or says he was defrauded in some way. His bank can place a stop on that check and refund the money (to him, not you!), even if you deposited it several days prior. This little known loophole with cashier’s checks essentially buys your buyer a 3-5 day test drive and puts your money at great risk. This is how long it takes these checks to clear, so keep that in mind. Tell the seller he has to wait until it clears before he can take the car!
2. If the potential buyer wants to take a test drive. Take a picture of his driver’s license with your camera phone and never let them go alone. If he wrecks it, it’s your loss. And obviously he wont be interested in the anymore. Traffic and parking tickets are on your tab too. So be careful, go with him on the test drive and guide him to routes that have less traffic/danger.
3. If your buyer pays with cash in person, check it’s authenticity. If you are selling your car it’s a good idea to be prepared and  go to your bank to have the teller give you instructions on counterfeit identification and if you’re really nice she might even give you that cool little black marker that turns a certain color when swiping a U.S. dollar note.
4. Personal checks are just like cashier’s checks. Virtually no difference. Both can be canceled. Keep this in mind.

General Tips for a Successful Sale

1. Never promise a car to a buyer without a deposit! I see this all to often and everyone gets burned. Unscrupulous buyers will keep you on the line until they scrounge up the funds. Or they’ll use the opportunity to look for better deals. But in the meantime all those other interested parties you are getting calls from may already have ALL the funds in hand! It only takes a couple days or less to find a car so by waiting for the first guy you are giving away all those other potentially more reliable buyers, who might just find another car to buy in the meantime. Just make it clear to your buyer: no deposit, no promise! Now, if you do receive a deposit it’s important to honor the deal.  But more importantly it’s what’s written down on the bill of sale, or email agreement, etc. If there is no time stipulation then you could possibly be holding the car for months, you know after his grandfather passes away and he gets the inheritance, etc. I generally have a 10 business day time limit for the balance. This is fairly standard, if not a bit on the long side.
2. I would suggest avoiding trades altogether, unless you’re a professional or s/he wants to trade gold bullion. Yes, I take gold bullion in trade for my vehicles! Gold is the oldest money in the world and easily exchangeable for any currency.
3. After signing off the title, make sure you get copies of the front and back.
4. Always remove the advertisement after selling the car

Now that you are armed with some knowledge, I wish you the best of luck with your sale! -Matt

As sports car maker Koenigsegg reverses out of its takeover deal, GM-owned Saab is increasingly being viewed by analysts as a company without a future. It aims to be a volume producer, but last year produced just 93,000 vehicles – a tiny number by global standards.

Compare this to BMW, which produced 1.2 million cars in the same period or even local competitor Volvo, which sold 374,000 new vehicles. Saab is not even profitable; while most companies have suffered in the recession, Saab failed even to make a profit in the good times, and has only moved into the black once in the past twenty years.

But Saab has enjoyed brighter days. The company built its reputation on safety – in 1958 it became the first carmaker anywhere to fit seatbelts as standard and in 1972 produced the first cars with side-impact protection.

Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget (‘the Swedish Airplane Company‘) was founded as a plane maker back in 1937. Production of Saab cars began in 1949, with the launch of the Saab 92. Saabs were built to be aerodynamic, something that seemed obvious to the company’s aeronautical engineers, but which many larger manufacturers placed low on their lists of priorities. The cars were front-wheel drive, something else which was unusual at the time.

If the cars themselves were sensible, they were imbued with a certain sex appeal thanks to their success on the international rally circuit. Erik Carlsson became a Saab legend in the sixties after winning both the Monte Carlo and RAC rallies.

Saab merged with truckmaker Scania in 1969, giving the company certain economies of scale. The launch of the Saab 99, larger than any previous Saabs, saw the company move into the modern era of car making.

The 1980s turned out to be Saab’s glory years. The 900 was followed by the 9000, which gave the company a well-deserved place in the premium car market. Then a cabriolet version of the 900 gave Saab something it had never previously achieved: glamour.

But the boom years could not last. The 1987 stock market crash hit Saab particularly hard – unlike the larger carmakers; it did not have the strength to ride out the storm and had no new models in the pipeline. In 1990, GM took a 50 percent stake in Saab, and the two companies starting collaborating on new models. In 2000, GM bought the company outright, breaking the link with Scania.

GM tried to bring Saab back into profitability. New models were brought in and Saab started to share model platforms and manufacturing facilities with other GM brands.

The initial results of the GM partnership seemed promising – in 1995, the year after the launch of the new 900, Saab turned its first profit for seven years.

Saab’s Jan-Åke Jonsson said being part of GM brought significant advantages:

“Overall, GM has brought a lot of technology into Saab – machinery, equipment and laboratories. We’ve also benefited from being a part of a global purchaser,” he said this autumn.

But these synergies did not bring long-term profitability: the company fell back into the red in 1996 and has remained loss-making ever since, although Saab has always argued that the company was so fully integrated into GM that its official profits did not reflect the true state of the company.

Where GM has faced most criticism is in its treatment of the brand.

“GM is sometimes described as one of the industry’s worst brand-wreckers, They don’t even dare to put their own Chevrolet brand on their Corvette models,” said Mikael Wickelgren, a car industry expert at the University of Gothenburg.

Many Saab fans would agree. Tony Damström, chairman of the Stockholm Saab Owners Club, reckoned GM’s ownership had constrained Saab:

“I’ve always felt it was rather limiting, and prevented the company from finding its own innovative solutions. They’ve had to force everything into another company’s mould.”

One thing that irritated many Saab fans was GM’s propensity to slap Saab badges on cars with very un-Swedish backgrounds. One such car was the Saab 9-2X, which was a modified Subaru Impreza launched in the early-2000s, built in Japan and sold on the American market.

“I don’t think that was a good move – if a car is not a unique product, then it harms the brand. Using a common platform is one thing, but here they went too far,” said Damström.

Saab’s Jan-Åke Jonsson admitted that GM “didn’t focus so much on branding. We’ve missed opportunities in that regard.” He also says having to adjust its range to fit in with other GM brands led to the company having a “narrow offer and a long product cycle.”

When Koenigsegg entered the frame, fans hoped Saab might be able to rediscover its roots.

But what makes a Swedish car? The fate of Saab has always been inextricably linked to that of its somewhat larger compatriot, Volvo, based in Gothenburg, less than 60 miles from Trollhättan.

The identities of Saab and Volvo have always oozed Swedishness. The sturdiness of the cars, their focus on safety and latterly their environmental credentials have reflected Swedish Lutheran values of reliability, rationalism and social responsibility. In a Swedish car, sportiness and speed would never come before safety and reliability. The cars were built for tough Swedish driving conditions – they had to be able to cope with snow, dirt tracks, and the ever-present risk of crashing into a moose.

The similarities between Saab and Volvo, as well as their geographical proximity, have led to periodic calls from Swedish business and union leaders for the two to merge – in 1977, merger talks reached an advanced stage. The idea re-emerged in 2008 as Ford and GM faced financial problems. Swedish union bosses publicly backed a merger, but at the corporate level the idea was seen as unrealistic.

Now, the company’s very existence is deemed unrealistic by a slew of observers. And Saab’s fate could be sealed for good when GM meets to discuss the firm’s future at the start of December.

The EURO Auto Festival (http://www.euroautofestival.com/) was held at the gorgeous BMW Zentrum in Greer, SC. The featured marque for 2009 was the Morgan, which is celebrating its 100th year anniversary! The wooden bodied classic was lining the field, and stole the show.

The show also honored the 50th year anniversary of the Mini and 20th year anniversary of the BMW 8 Series. Other vintage models attracted to the show included the Austin Healey, MG, Triumph, Mercedes Benz, Rolls Royce, Volvo, Porsche, Jaguar, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Land Rover, Opel and more!

The charity of choice is the Disaster Relief Fund of the American Red Cross (http://www.redcross.org/), which all proceeds will be donated from the show.

Click on the video to experience the view of Morgan’s surrounding the Zentrum!