After moving back to New England, it was apparent that I’d need my own car. A bicycle was actually a pretty good way of getting around in the San Francisco Bay Area, but that obviously won’t work here. California is condensed, with tightly-packed cities spaced extremely far apart. As long as I stayed in one area, a bicycle was just perfect, it even solved the massive parking issues California is plagued with. In New England, towns and cities aren’t condensed, and overlap with each other. There are no super-malls, and doing errands requires a fair amount of driving. Since driving everywhere is so beautiful here, I’m not about to complain about it, but I had to decide on what to get next.
Craigslist is always my go-to for purchasing parts. Aside from the occasional flake, it’s a simple procedure of finding what you want, showing up with cash, some light negotiation, and strike a deal. It doesn’t have to be a production if done correctly. First, figure out exactly what you want.
Price: $800-$2500 (I don’t want a complete rust-bucket, but I’m on a limited budget)
Things I want: “manual” Other than that, I’ll have to go on a case-by-case basis.
Things I don’t want: “-automatic -minivan -wagon”
Specific cars/manufacturers I outright refuse to own: “-vw -volkswagen -audi -saab -saturn -neon -hyundai”
I ended up with the following page: Craigslist Search
Unfortunately, only a few cars caught my eye on the first day I searched. I found an s13 Nissan 240sx (I know/like Nissan’s rear wheel drive engineering products), a Suzuki Samurai (tiny 4wd fun-mobile), and a Mazda Miata that was at the very top of my price range and needed a lot of work to be trustworthy. I didn’t get any replied to my emails, and the posts didn’t include phone numbers, so I called them a wash. I wasn’t too concerned.
The best way to shop Craigslist is through RSS feeds. Essentially, you can choose to be notified whenever someone posts an item that matches your search terms. That means you’ll probably be the first to reply, and you’ll have a much better chance of a positive response. Every time you search on Craigslist, there’s an RSS button on the bottom-right that lets you subscribe however you want (Firefox LiveBookmarks is the simplest way to do this, but I prefer to use Google Reader). I subscribed to that search, along with a few other similar ones (searching for turbo, awd, etc). The RSS feed for the search above is: Craigslist RSS
It looks like gibberish if you try to read it by itself, but if you paste that feed into http://reader.google.com you’ll get automatic updates that you can sift through with your morning coffee.
Fast-forward a few days…
As I was sipping my morning coffee, looking through my personal RSS feed for news that I might want to share, I was surprised to see a ’94 BMW 325is coupe for sale for $2500. It had 190k miles, but otherwise looked pretty solid and was right down the street from me. After a phone conversation, I headed over to test-drive it and found a few problems (ammunition for negotiation). When I left, we had agreed on $1600 as a fair price that I was willing to go with. I picked it up that night, and started the tear-down.
In the end, I bought it and brought all its little problems into my garage. More updates to come soon.
I’ve been serious thinking about picking up one of theses. This was my second BMW I own as the first on was a 318 way back
I almost bought a 318 instead of this, but the smaller, weaker engine and the weaker rear differential didn’t offset the weight savings for me.
Please continue the discussion here