The Purchase

I made the offer at the end of March, which was accepted by the seller. The next month and a half was a huge headache, which you will find out. The first obstacle was making sure that this indeed was the car that I wanted to buy before I sent payment. The seller had not provided the full VIN in the vehicle listing, which had me concerned. Once I got the full VIN, I ran an AutoCheck vehicle history report, only to find that there was an accident listed for the car. The report listed it as a “Right front impact with another vehicle. Severe damage reported.”

I immediately contacted the seller to ask him about this, feeling like he wasn’t being up-front with me. He assured me that the car had not been in a single accident, that the panels were all original, undamaged, and that the car was not even driving at the time that the report says that the accident occurred. After investigating this further, I found out that vehicle history reports are a joke and near impossible to correct any false information. He assured me that he had been up and down the insides of the car and there was no way that the car had been in an accident.

With that behind me, the next big challenge was arranging payment for a seller in another state. I was very hesitant to just mail a check for the purchase amount to a total stranger. I did a lot more investigating and looked up the seller’s house on google maps. This was the first image of the DeLorean I saw that wasn’t provided to me by the seller. It’s parked under the car port under the car cover:

Once I knew I wasn’t getting scammed, I decided to overnight the seller a cashier’s check, after which he overnighted me the signed title. My wife and I were the proud new owners of a 1981 DeLorean! The hardest part of the process was behind us… or so I thought. The plan from the beginning was to have the car shipped to our house due to the long distance and the price of flights. To fly my wife and me to Memphis one way was well over $1000, not to mention the cost of the drive home. I got a few bids, and decided to go with the company with the lowest bid, thinking the car would get picked up in the next week or so and be at my house in a couple of weeks.

I went ahead and purchased collector’s auto insurance from Hagerty Insurance, just in case something happened before the car was picked up. I was ready to roll and just needed to wait, and wait, and wait. Nobody ever called me to pick up the car.

I tried multiple shipping companies, beginning with shipanycar.com. What a disaster. The web site says that they will be able to tell you a pickup date within 7 to 10 business days. After waiting a week and a half with no word, I contacted them only to hear that because of where the car was located and where I lived, not many drivers were going along that route and it could be a long time before they locate a driver. They advised me to try another shipping company and offered me a refund of my $150 deposit.

I then posted the car on uship.com, where drivers bid on the job and I can pick the company that I want by selecting their bid. After I accepted a bid from a company and I paid the deposit, I was contacted immediately by the company to let me know that it will be tough, but they should be able to locate a driver within a week. Another week passed, but once again I was told that they couldn’t find a driver and they suggested that I contact a company with their own private fleet of trucks. I then contacted DAS twice, only to be told that I need a special quote. I left two voicemails with the guy in charge of special quotes, sent him an email, but he never contacted me back. They must not have wanted my business. I then contacted Passport, but was also told by them that there was no guarantee that they would be able to ship the car anytime soon.

That was the last straw. I finally decided that I was going to buy a one-way plane ticket to Memphis, TN and spend a weekend driving over 1600 miles home, which was exactly what I did. On the first weekend of May, after work on Friday, I made the 2.5 hour flight from Salt Lake to Memphis and the seller picked me up at the airport. He was a super nice guy and I’m so glad that he took such good care of the car. When we pulled up to his house that I had seen multiple times on Google maps, I saw the DeLorean under his carport, draped in the car cover. We spent about an hour going over everything that he had packed into the car for me to take home. I asked a bunch of questions on where certain things were located, such as the hood and trunk release, horn, and the light switch. I had him sign a bill of sale that I’d need when registering the car in Utah. He was super helpful and I could tell that he didn’t like seeing the car leave as I pulled out of the driveway. He even changed the oil for me before I flew out so that it had a fresh oil change for the trip.