I can't stand it any longer...after years of seeing moronic Craigslist and paper classified ads, I feel we must touch on points in the language of old cars and trucks that need to be addressed. This issue may have been confronted before, but I feel a need to vent. Any of you who have contributions and/ or personal experiences, please post them here. Perhaps this will also serve as a guide for the uninitiated, which they can use as a guide to translating some of the insanity that exists in classifieds today.

I'll start off by saying that "It was running when it was parked" is the most overused and irrelevant phrase in any language. The key word there is WAS. WAS, being the past tense of IS, means that at one point the item in question existed in one state, while now it exists in another...thus rendering the entire statement internally redundant and relegating those reading the ad to thinking you are an idiot.

Above all, don't make the error of saying that something was running before parts were removed. It's pure stupidity. That means it is not running now, and that's what matters. If I can't crank something up and hear/see it run, I'll assume it is junk, no matter what the seller says. It may indeed run like a champ with just a little work, but I'm not going to take anyone's word for it. Either crank it up and put your motor where your mouth is, or shut up and sell it as a non-running vehicle.

You might as well say "It was running when I parked it three years ago, but since then a bunch of kids poured sugar in the gas tank, rodents have chewed up the wiring, the hoses and belts have rotted, the carb was taken off, the back yard flooded so the truck was sitting in water up to the roof for a week, and I have let my buddy cannibalize pieces from it to fix his." "Does it run now?" "No, but it did on the day I parked it, and that's what's important!"

A few more to get this going:

mechanic's dream= WARNING!! You'd better know what you are doing before you buy this vehicle!

needs restoration= too much wrong with it to list individually/ marriage-ending money pit

sitting in a field for 20 years= rust bucket/ need shovels and a front end loader to get it out

sitting in the woods for 10 years= rust bucket/ need shovels, a front end loader, and a chainsaw to get it out

sitting in the woods for 20+ years= rust bucket/ might as well use chainsaws and shovels to cut off your arms and bury them, 'cause you ain't getting it out!

 

I can't leave out two crowd pleasers:

RARE= Second most overused (and usually most incorrect) term in old vehicle language. This means that I personally have not noticed many (or any) of these, so it must be exceptionally valuable. *NOTE*- May have no actual positive effect on value, even if it is rare. Bubonic plague and Yugos are rare, too. That doesn't mean they are worth anything.

needs battery= this is my excuse for trying to get you to take my word for it when I say it runs excellent. There's nothing else wrong with it except for this. Trust me. *NOTE*- BEWARE X2 when many other useless items have been added (e.g. chrome valve covers, chrome air cleaner, custom Pep Boys chrome chain license plate frame, skull door lock *****, etc.), but yet the battery is nowhere to be found.

 

I like how every ad uses the term "only" when describing the price. It may be actually worth $6000 but they're selling it for "only" $15000.

Another tactic I find interesting is how they use 9's to make you think it's less than what it actually is, like $9999 which is actually a penny away from $10000.

 

I hope you feel a little bit better LMAO

 

Around here it's fives...$3995, $7995, $10995...

There are a couple of used car lots around here that come up with weird numbers for their cars. I went out browsing one weekend and looked at a '79 F100 long wheelbase dually with a 302 (yeah, I know...I just had to see it for myself!) among others, and at one place along the way I saw they had cars for like $3628, $5157, $4311. Whatever happened to using zeros?

But yes, you are right. Have you noticed that most places don't advertise things as less than a buck anymore if the price is 99 cents? Now they say it's 99 cents plus tax. I think a lot of people got ticked off because they felt it was false advertising.

And RangerHaywood, no, I don't feel better. I'm either sickened by the ignorance of people who sell stuff and don't know anything about it (it's even worse when they claim they do) or ticked off at people who word ads in such a way as to get you to believe something that isn't so.

Just about everyone on this forum is familiar with the old practice of "rounding up." We warn about it all the time. How do you know it's really a 390 and not a 360? How do you know it's an actual 400 and not a "rounded up" 351M?

How many times have we scoffed at the "rarity" of something that is actually quite common? I've seen ads where people have advertised things for cars that don't even belong on those cars, and yet the item is listed as "rare" because they have never seen it on that car before. There's a reason why you've never seen one of these on one of those. Because they never put one of these on one of those!!!

Look back at some of the classified ads that have been brought before us for opinions. Consider how many folks we have spared from nightmares by throwing out the red flags and bringing things to their attention that just weren't right. That, I think, speaks for itself.

 

That dually F100 on Craigslist? I got a laugh out of that one lol.

 

I enjoy the 352 and 360 FE engines MAGICALLY becoming 390s.

Or the 390s becoming 428s.

Or 1978+ 4X4 trucks becoming HIGHBOYS, doesn't matter if it's an F250, F150 or F350, they all become highboys somehow.

Can't forget the "Runs and Looks Great! (needs transmission)"

Josh

 

Thats got to be around the 10,000 dollar range, I've never seen one before with those options.

I've heard this one before;

"Does it run good?" "Yeah, if you can get it to start."

 

That's the truck, but that's not the place I saw the strange prices...can't remember where it was...anyway, clarification made.

I must say that the truck has a very solid cab on it, but definitely not OEM stuff going on there.

 

How about the guy who has saved EVERY receipt for EVERY little thing he's ever bought for his truck over the years and hands you a ratty old shoe box stuffed full of crumpled receipts dating back to the Reagan administration as if he expects you to reimburse him for every penny he's ever spent on the truck including the ten dollar oil chage back in 1981.

 

an you hear some people say it need only minor repair an there is a lot of so called minor repairs needed to be done to it. an another one is it ran good when it was parked but have not been started in years an the engine an everything has rust all over it an the whole thing looks like junk. an you hear some people say it would not take a lot to get it running an on the road.