nik1

To start with, a special thanks is due to our son (993innc) for putting up with me throughout the search for the “perfect car”. To begin with, he and I made an agreement that each would search for a different vehicle with a certain criteria. Having been raised in the 60’s and having owned many a high performance vehicle including Oldsmobile 442 and Chevrolet Corvette, I set off looking for a 1965, 66, or 67 Corvette roadster. Our son on the other hand went looking for what he was most familiar with, a 1995 through 98 993 Cabriolet. We each had a budget and a wish list. To make a long story short, my wife and I searched up and down the East Coast and spent a small fortune on travel and PPI’s. In time, we found one that was completely checked out (PPI) and negotiated on. A 1966 Corvette roadster that had an off frame restoration. As I went to pay the man, our son checked the VIN and found, low and behold, a mismatch between the car plate and the title. Don’t mechanics check that as part of the PPI? Anyway, walk away from that one we did! So much for (original) Corvette’s. Meanwhile, the Porsche search was becoming frustrating too. Having worked on a number of possibilities to no avail, a 1996 993 Cabrio in San Francisco appeared on Rennlist. It had less than 30K miles on it and was reported to be in excellent condition. After having one of our son’s friends in LA look it (thanks Chuck), we proceeded. In checking it out with the mechanic who maintained the car over the years in San Fransisco, we found that it belonged to a Hollywood star couple (original owners), that my wife and I were very familiar with (names withheld), and that the car was now in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, the pictures and questions and answers began to go back and forth. At the same time, I began to interview garages in the Los Angeles area by telephone in preparation for the PPI that I knew was right around the corner. A special thanks here to Tom and Toni of Callas Rennsport. I asked that everything from A to Z be checked out and written up. Paint thickness on each panel, tire pressures, spark plug gaps, leak down and pressure tests, etc., etc., etc. The car was schedule to be there for several days and as the PPI proceeded, I would go to sleep at night and wake up the next morning with another item to be checked. Even to the point of sending engine oil to a lab out of state for analysis was performed. Needles to say, the list grew and the car was there for six weeks. At the end of it all, we knew what we had. I received a seven page report and CD with pictures detailing everything I wanted. Thanks guys for a job well done! Here’s what was found. What I was hoping would be a low mileage collector, turned out to be a well cared for low mileage driver with star power. Some front end body panels had been re-painted, but OK, no accidents, just rock chips and supermarket carriages. We needed to make this car a little special for posterity’s sake. How to accomplish was simple. Some pictures with the owner(s) and an personalized autograph on the visor took care of that. While out there taking care of business, our son and his wife had the opportunity to meet the folks at Callas Rennsport and some of the people they chat with on Rennlist. The timing couldn’t have been better because they even attended the Orange County PCA Concours event at Dana Point. Task number one completed, I moved on to task number two, getting the car from Los Angeles, CA to Wilmington, NC without damage. After interviewing a number of cross country transport companies, I landed with SCS of Troy, MI. Now, Clay was my driver, and he was in a big red covered rig that was half as long as a city block when he showed up in Wilmington. With his cellular number in hand, you know he and I talked on occasion! Don’t know how he got it in and out of my neighborhood, but he did. When that back gate opened and he rolled my car out, my heart began to race! As the gate was lowered I remember thinking that buying this car was the right decision. What a beauty! Ataboy to Clay. Not a scratch on it that wasn’t there in Los Angeles. Anyway, the minute it got in the driveway, it was washed and pulled into the garage for a look see. With note pad in hand I started my list. Two actually. List number one was the “to purchase” list, and list two was the “to get done” list. The next day, I set to work on both. Between Gabe at Leith Porsche in Raleigh, and Bob at DC Auto in Rocky Mount, NC, the miscellaneous parts were ordered. A call to Topsonline in Panorama City, Ca, and the boot for the top was on the way. So you think that after the car purchase the spending is finished? No way! I’m just getting started! Next a call to Rimgaurd to freshen the wheels. “OK”, “yes I can meet you at a local dealer tomorrow to get the work done, but let me suggest that you do the work at my home. With temperatures in the mid ninetees wouldn’t you prefer doing the work in my air conditioned garage rather than in a hot car lot?” The next day Jamin pulled up to my home with a trailer full of equipment. In no time at all my rims looked like new. Meanwhile, our son was on e-Bay having a blast with my credit card buying what HE felt I should have (ie; a wind deflector and other miscellaneous goodies). Last on my list of things to do was registration. My goal was to retain the original title with original signatures (star power remember). Department of Motor Vehicles policy in North Carolina is to shred the old title and issue a new. After a number of telephone calls and escalation to Director level at the Department of Transportation, the State agreed to have one of their employees hand walk the old title through the process and return it to me with original signatures un-molested. Thanks to Yashica of the North Carolina Department of Transportation for all her help. The car is now titled and registered in North Carolina (California title with a picture of the car and original owner is framed and hanging on a wall in our home). Well………., we’re almost at the end of the journey, and I know some of you have been waiting for pictures, so here we go. We hope you’ve enjoyed the chronology of events and will take the time to review the pictures. We look forward to your comments.

AOW162435

Congrats!

Now who was the former owner?




Andreas

GT9111

Great car!! But I just can't read your single block of paragraph write-up.

larpy

+1 Glad you found your car. You will love it!

cpdjfd107

Is this the car that Robin Wright Penn sold and was autographing which was posted in the Heather Locklear thread a few days ago??

993inNC

It would be
Sorry for the big block of rambling, he's new here and doesn't have the edict down yet......and he's old (((shh...)))

I'll tell the entire story, but this will be L...O...N...G! Going to split it into parts.

Part 1

The real story on this car ended up really being a "buyer beware" tale. In the end everything worked out, but I know most of you would have run from this car if you encountered what I did before and during its PPI.

This is how things started:
https://rennlist.com/forums/for-sale...w-mileage.html

As Dad mentioned, it was my task (knowing him) to find a cream puff of a car, anything less and I ran the risk of hearing about it for.....ever!
This car fit the bill to a "T" (so we thought). I PM's the seller and we exchanged a few back and forth over the next week or so. Come to find out, I was dealing with a personal assistant not Ms. Wright, okay whatever I thought.

I spoke to the indy that looked after the car in SF (I believe well know here so I'll keep that name withheld). Guy tells me, "oh that is a perfect car, you won't be disappointed". "Everything ever needed on that car was done, she never questioned fixing anything.....its PERFECT!, I wouldn't tell you anything other than the truth about it, I have a reputation to uphold" Mind you, he upholds the ad's claim, the car is perfect, no damage, flawless etc., but tells me it did have one area worked on by a paintless dent guy, okay no big deal.

Wow, I'm thinking, now that's a review, I have found "the" car
He says, tell ya what, I know the car is in Socal, but if she can get it up here, I'll go over it for you one last time to make sure everything is right on it for you. First thought, okay, nice gesture but not sure I want the wrench doing the PPI, I want an unbiased opinion.
So okay, I get with assistant (who let me say here turned out to be an amazing individual throughout all of this) and through her, strike a deal on price with the caveat that the PPI checks out.

Our resident SoCal RL'er and all around (and I mean this) great guy Chuck W volunteers to go look at the car. Calls back, "man, drive like a new car, couple blemishes, but this one is a real peach" (Chuck had another he looked at for me as a benchmark and this was light years ahead). "beautiful" I'll set up the PPI and get back in touch.

Chuck goes back sometime later to pick up the car to drive it to the PPI shop (we now know ends up being Callas' place). 7am his time, I get a text message with attached pic. What is it you may be wondering? A HUGE oil pond underneath the rear of the car in the garage. "Oh man, that can't be good" but ok, not a big deal, car hasn't been driven in a while, VC gaskets must have sprung a leak". Bring it down there lets see what the car is really all about.

........ got to get munchkin to day care, more later...........do come back, it gets good!!................

nik1

Thanks for the congrats. And yes it is one in the same car. By the way, my son, some day you will realize that "old" is a frame of mind YOU will have to deal with. As for me, I'm not there yet!

cabrio993

Congratulations! Welcome to the Madness!!

Your son did a great job in finding the perfect 993 for you.

P.S. The <ENTER> key is your friend.

MarkD

great car, congrats!

993inNC

Okay so a little more now.

And before I get started, you guys should understand that for every 1 call I made to the assistant, that turns into at least 2 more calls. She had to contact Ms. Wright and then get back to me. It ended up turning into a text barrage over the course of months.....but more on that later.

So the car gets to Callas, Dad has explained to Tony what he wants, I too talk with Tony to reiterate what we are after and he tells me, we'll get back in touch once he's half way through it. Late his time the first night he calls, "I'm only half way through and already have a 1 page list of things". Oh freakin' wonderful, now my heart stops, what's this all about? "Let me email this to you and we'll talk about it line by line." Greeeeeat, lets do that. I get the list, lots of little crap, stuff missing, loose, not wrong necessarily but not right either.

He says, "now it has had paint work and maybe quite a bit". Whoa, wtf!!!! What do you mean? Well took headlights out, marking on the inside driver's side would indicate someone has been here doing something, there is a paint line where the layer aren't built up enough between the old/new paint. Doors, bumper cover, hood.....yada yada yada. ****** %#$@&* I'm thinking, now I already have $400 in his time to this point just to tell me my flawless cream puff has had a bunch of paintwork (possibly) and a bunch of little parts and pieces missing or not right. Well okay but holding out hope he's wrong and it is still a "clean" car, we decide to press on. The Hollywood ownership aspect really did appeal to Mom and Dad even though initially it was played off as not as big a deal, it was about finding the right car. By this time there have been countless phone calls and texts back and forth to the seller trying to find out what the deal is with my new found information. Now I'm starting to have second thoughts and worry that I may have gotten us into a sticky situation. In the mean time Callas continues his inspection. The PPI went from a day, to a week. Over the rest of that week, Callas finds that the oil is low.....okay not unusual, the A/C and oil cooler sensors aren't working and the car runs a wee bit warm, hmmm...More phone calls and texts back and forth, will the seller fix? I don't want to continue a PPI on a car that we don't even know is worth it. Seller agrees to pay to have the oil brought up and the sensors fixed and the VC gaskets replaced. Okay, she's playing ball.

Callas calls days later (could schedule the fix right away), "ah, you won't believe this....." Son a B%^% now what? "The oil level we found down close to 6 quarts". Let me say that again for those that missed it, that was SIX QUARTS! Are you kidding? That car has been ridding on 50% of its capacity? Yeah, good news, VC gaskets to care of the leaks, sensors are working, car runs fine.

Great but how long has it been low? How many miles has it been destroying internal engine parts? Callas says the only right thing to do is send a sample to a test facility. At this point I'm getting pissed, I have spent months (2) so far making this car happen (I swear, no lie, the call/text count had to have reached 100+) only to find its not what it was represented to be! And I'm loosing ability real quick to overlook these issues, what do I do, what do I tell Dad? I have to look out for his best interests, and now we are in deep, CRAP

.........more to come in the continuing saga.............

paa502

Congrats - a beauty as is R.W.

Bouzoukikid

Congratulations.

Wow, how did the seller tolerate you.

My buying experience was slightly different. I'm so totally impatient.
I went , I saw, I bought.

993inNC

Part 3:

So I'm at this cross road, do we bale and move on to another car? Or stick with it?

I figured at this point we were so deep into the car from a time and money standpoint, why not follow through and see where it leads. We had gone as far as we could on our PPI dime (1/2 way), Ms. Wright had agree'd to make repairs on the last round, why not see if she play ball for round 2. I finally got to the point where we spoke one on one. I needed to express to her our dismay about what we've been finding, while not insulting her and having her shut off. Even if she didn't sell the car to us, I figured it would be a learning experience and she would have the car fixed for the next buyer (was almost in a "help her" mode by now.

She could not have been more gracious and pleasant to me, a bit pissed herself (so I gathered) that car was what it ended up being, and embarrassed all at the same time. Not being an enthusiast, I had to brief her on the fact that she was marketing to an enthusiast website and issues A,B, and C are the types of things we look for.....oh and that your car isn't even close to the condition you though it was
I explained that IF the paint work was true, that was a big in the Porsche world and that usually carried a hefty deppreciable value.

Getting back to the oil issue, I explained that if the motor had been run long enough without enough of its only life blood (oil), it may have damaged the motor and these were not a car you just go down to the local pick and pull for a $750 motor!
The oil analysis was a must, as well as cutting open the filters. Again she agreed to pay for the service and Callas promptly sent off the sample. In explaining to her what we were after, I took this opportunity to tell her, if the analysis came back questionable, she was looking at a lot less value for her car than she wanted. I wanted to let her know where she was with the car and that I was no fool, either its right or its a pretty paper weight and I wasn't about to pay the original agreed to price. Understanding, and completely disappointed (not at me but the situation at hand), we proceeded.

This where it gets real fun!

Test comes back, everything seems fine, BUT.........

In trying to get the car back to baseline originally, Callas added oil to what was there, THEN sent the sample off. Well it came back saying that the sample although fine, was scewd since the original oil got "watered" down with the fresh oil Come on, really!

4 weeks have gone by now, this car has been at his shop, I have made countless calls, texts, emails back and forth, to and froe, I was at my whit's end with this ordeal by now. Poor Chuck, who left his car at Ms. Wrights house for two days and took the bus to work from the shop couldn't believe how long this was going on either. I'd get weekly texts from him wanting to know the details and updates, it was truly becoming a soap opera.

Pissed, I told Callas it was his turn to tell Ms Wright we needed a second sample, oh and that the car needed 500 miles put on it before a second sample should be taken!!! Ms. Wright not available and her assistant unable to drive a stick, talked Tom (Tony's partner) into driving it for week. The second sample was taken and all came back clean. Because of all that had transpired I was a little firmer with Tony than maybe I should have been, but along with these tests I was looking for someone to put their name on it and stand behind the findings. I would be buying a car, with questionable service history on a recommendation by a shop owner I did not know (although came highly regarded here) and a test facility I didn't choose. Well from there on, I didn't talk with Tony without Tom being on the line as well. I get the impression I caused some pins and needles feelings with them and the test facility that I would be out for blood if either screwed up and the car died as soon as I got it
I wanted reassurance that they were confident in their assessments! And not selling me a line of BS from 3000 miles away (again I was pretty rippin' at this point, I had had enough and was going to hold everyone to task).

In the mean time, yet another call to Ms. Wright to discuss the "new" price assuming the oil came back promising and with the paint question in mind. Working off a previous "paperweight" value I threw out, she asked me what we'd willing to give her. She expressed really needing to sell, couldn't afford keeping a car not in use. I must admit, smelling a little blood, I felt I either needed to get this car for a great deal A) because its service history was now CLEARLY in question and B) to protect Dad's investment. My thought was even if the motor had issues down the road, a used replacement motor should still not make his total investment over weighted vs. the car's retail value.

Once he heard about the oil level though, even he told me to "walk" from it and move on, but again, I just had a feeling........stick it out. She was paying to tell me what I needed to know, and our investment to Callas had been spent to this point so why walk.

The second test came back fine, she had my number in her head. In a final conversation with Ms. Wright, I laid my position on the table and made my final proposal to her. Of course being much lower than she initially started at, I got the "well another guy called me a month ago and kinda offered me $ xxxxxx, let me make a few calls and I'll let you know. FINE waited this long, still hadn't finished the remainder of my PPI with Callas so I had nothing to loose, this was a Friday. "I'll call you first of the week". FINE........

First comes, no call, mid - no call. A week went by, and I really wanted this off my plate at this point. I was cooked, done, stick a fork in me. I didn't give two sh*ts anymore if we bought it or not. Dad had prepared him and Mom that this was a dead horse and we'd be moving on. I text the assistant one more time (this is verbatim) "hey, where are we with this car? I need to move on".

A minute or 5 go by, text rings with reply "If you'll do $xxxxxx, Ms. Wright will sell it". Huh? So I call Dad, "hey if she wants to sell it for $x, you still in?" "Why no, go for it, checked out ok in the end, most of the heavy money she paid to have fixes made.....do it"
I call the assistant to make sure I had read the text correct. She validated that yes she will sell it if we buy it for $xx.

FINE, wrap it up, see ya in a week with check in hand. Once again Chuck W. came to our rescue and picked my wife and I up at LAX that next Thursday and offered his home to us for the w/e. He drove us to Callas' shop (about 30 min. away) the next morning, we met Tony and Tom, went over the car and the remainder of his report, picked up the car and drove to Ms. Wrights home to seal the deal.

In total the car was at Callas' place some 6 weeks! Ms. Wright spent a few grand on repairs, I burned up my phone key pad with text messages and calls and Chuck well, he got diner and a soap opera
I have sold real estate and not gone through as much crap as I did getting this car

In the end Mom and Dad are tickled, the car really is very nice in person. My wife and I got to cruise SoCal for the w/e in a 993 cab before it got shipped back. We have a new best friend in SoCal (Chuck W) and everyone (including Ms. Wright) is happy. She knew it was going to a great home and an enthusiasts care and over-site, and I think that helped her come to grips on the price we gave her.

Strangest thing about the car, it has almost no options, but has a factory carbon fiber shift **** and e-brake handle and Carrera sill trim as well as square oval tips but the motorsound option isn't on the sticker (I gave Dad my M.sound air box). Only thing I can think is that was Sean Penn's additions to the car and are dealer installed?

An experience it was!

993inNC

Don't know how anyone does, but.......

I was the same way as you, when buying my car. No PPI, just flew in, paid for it drove 600 miles home. Had I done a PPI, I would never have bought it based on its original mechanical condition. But I would have missed out on one of the most fun cars I've ever had and turned into a great way to learn about working on the car.

But this purchase was not my money, and I took things very seriously.

Bouzoukikid

Absolutely understandable.

By the way, beautiful car. I'm a big cab fan.

My car will be a family heirloom past down to my kids. Hope your dad does the same