Old Volvo, New Problems

After my recent move, my wife and I decided that we were going to need a second car to help with the extended distances we are going to have to drive back and forth to our places of work. So, we started looking around in the paper and online, and finally settled upon a decent sounding car on craigslist.org. We happened upon an ’86 Volvo Wagon, and the guy selling it was named Steve. The car looked pretty decent and was at least running when we looked at it. We decided it was good enough and wanted to buy it. He told me that he needed to tighten up a few things on the car that he had done to repair it and whatnot. He took down my information for the title and other such information. He told us on the phone that he didn’t want to accept a personal check to pay for it, so we had gotten a couple money orders for the amount needed. Since he wasn’t giving us the car then, he asked for a deposit on the car. Which in hindsight seems a bit odd, as I wasn’t walking away from the deal with anything other than his phone number and name and a receipt that I got from the money order. My fault I guess, but still an odd cookie.

So, after repeated phone calls, voicemails, and attempts to pick up the car, two weeks had passed, and FINALLY we arrange to get the car for the last time. It seems he was waiting on the title, and just before I came to get it, he asked me for all my information again, Umm, hello, didn’t you get this done when I asked you to? I guess $500 doesn’t buy you much except a long wait. Not really thinking, and not exactly knowing the law, we thought that we would just drive the car home and get it registered and whatever after that. Well, a bit of history, I haven’t ever bought a car from an individual, I’ve always either got them from a dealership, or transfered the tags to me, after getting the car from a relative. So, basically I was oblivious to the fact that it’s a BIG deal in our state that you don’t do that, even if you have the bill of sale and title in hand showing that days date. My wife wanted to drive it, and was pulled over about 3 miles from our house! They write her a ticket with 2 violations. They said the car needed to be towed, but were nice enough to allow the car to be towed to our house and not to the impound lot! Phew!

About 3 days after we got it registered and I went to take it to the inspection station to get it ready for driving. Well the guy spent about 10 minutes looking and it and came to me saying since you have 7 days to get this done, you should fix the things that I’ve seen already that will fail the car. That was nice, and he didn’t even charge for the inspection he had done. My one break, I thought. I fixed the washer motor, the license plate lights, and then had to get a mechanic to fix the headlight wiring. It was actually a little scary in that part of the engine comparment. Next day, I went to get it inspected again, thinking yeah, we are good to go now. WRONG! The car passed the saftey portion easily, but the emissions test was failed rather miserably on one of the tests. On top of that, it has an oil leak that wasn’t very apparent while I was working on the car.
Now, we are possibly on teh verge of paying a lot to get he emissions fixed, as well as the oil leak repaired. Is this $1500 piece of crap worth it? I hope so! It’s certainly not been worth the aggrevation and stress up until this point. Will I ever buy a car from anyone other than a dealer again? NO!

Lesson learned is how my wife put it. I just hope this lesson isn’t TOOO expensive!