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Ezine Ready

By: Bryon Blakey

After getting a few emails questioning why the name "Project Cars For Sale" for my blog, I thought I would explain. The main reason is that most people interested in project vehicles use this phrase to search for it. Shame on me for using such a base technique to gather readers, but writing for the sake of it is no fun.

As far as "Easy Money" is concerned, I have found that my purchasing project vehicles over the years has made a lot of money. However, I'm sure you are assuming that these project cars were all repaired in retailable condition. In reality we did repair some of them, but most of them were sold at online auction on EbayMotors in as is condition. "Why on earth wouldn't you fix them and get max dollar out of them?" you might ask. Well sometimes the worst thing you can do to a good deal is spend money on it. For instance, I gave $2,900 at auction for a 2001 Dodge Ram 1500 ClubCab with 70K miles on it. It was a trade in at a local new car store and it had a lot of surface body damage and bad bodywork on it. It had great tires and the interior was in good condition. After bidding and buying it, to my amazement, I discovered it drove great.

So now comes the decision making part. One option is to spend the $2,500 for paint and bodywork, $150 for the windshield, $100 for odds and end marker light etc.. and another $125 for a detail and own the truck for around $5775. And this all takes time and effort (brain damage as I refer to it) just to get it on the market. If the truck is finished and slick, I'm going to ask $8,900 for it and maybe have to negotiate down to somewhere in mid to upper 7's. Netting me around $1,700. Sounds great? Here are the downsides:

1. What if the bodyshop does an inadequite job of painting it? Your not paying for a retail job so it may not be retail quaility. What if they take forever to get it ready, again wholesale jobs take the backburner.
2. You tie up your money for the entire time or your building interest at the bank. Do that on a couple of hundred cars a year and see where you stand.
3. Time it takes to sell the vehicle may be as long as 2 or 3 months because it is just like all the other super slick Dodge trucks on the market and it has nothing special about it.
4. Every other crazy thing that can happen when you set on a commodity for too long (hail damage, busted windows and so on).

Or, what happens to most of my great automotive bargains that we get our hands on, we sell it at online auction. We originally gave $2900 for the truck, put it on Vprojectcar and sold it to the highest bidder for upper 4's in 5 days. Ok, we netted $1,700 in 5 days. No brain damage, no bodyshop excuses just gone out of my life forever (bustin bugs). Why did this work? Because I left some meat on it, it stood out in the market of all the other Dodge trucks out there. The buyer will have a great time reconditioning the truck and I had a great time making a few bucks.

Now I get on the road and get 3 or 4 more of those in the time it takes me to sell one super slick Dodge truck.

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