Ebay can be a strange experience. Ive bought and sold a bunch of stuff there. My rating approaches 170 so there have been that many transactions at a minimum. Ive bought and sold cars, motorcycles, engines, all kinds of stuff. So I went to ebay to find the Perfect Geo Metro. I live in Pennsylvania. We get snow here. We cover our roads with salt to get around in snow. This really does a job on our cars. Geos are made of metal, . . not much metal, but none the less . . metal. Metal rusts. When a Geo Metro rusts the problem is that the mounts for the front suspension rot out and the car is worthless. It costs more to fix them than they are worth. So there are a good number of worthless Geo Metros for sale around here. Many are on ebay.
I probably bid on a dozen Metros. Some never reached the reserve price. Some got too expensive for me. Some got snatched away through a last second sniper bid and I got aced out. I hate it when that happens.
Then . . . there was this Geo Metro, a 1990 with a bazillion miles and no title, it was not running (ran when parked) - it was only about an hour drive from here - it was only a 5 day auction and only two days were left, - the bidding had started at $50 and there was only one bid no reserve - the high bid would win. I figured it was probably rusted out. I email the seller to ask about some details. Never got an answer so I bid $51. What the heck? Maybe there were a few good parts I could use when I found the right car.
I won the auction. The guy wanted cash in one week. I figured out where he lived and took the money. That was a mistake. He was ticked. Didnt like people just dropping in unannounced. Wanted to cancel the sale. After some groveling on my part he backed off, took the money and we walked back through some fields to where it was sitting, . . . up to the door sills in mud. See photo
It was actually in better shape than I expected. As best as I could tell there was little to no rust. The body had almost no damage, only a few very small dents, all the glass was good It would be five weeks before the field dried out enough to get the car out. Part of the negotiation included me waiting till it was dry so his fields would not get all tore up pulling the Geo out.
I eventually flat towed it home with a tow bar, washed it and put it in the garage. Not bad for $51.00.
If you look close you can see the stash of acorns that field mice had put in the air cleaner housing . . . .
So . . all I have to do is swap engines and go racing. How hard could that be?