Rajiv Sarathy describes the cherry red 77 MGB he's thinking of buying and he
says:
> He's asking $4,000 for it and some misc. parts. Is it worth it?
Having recently shopped for and bought an MGB, I would say $4000 is WAY
TOO MUCH for the car you describe. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area,
my husband and I saw two _very nice_ 1979's. Both of these cars had
bodies in mint condition. The first car had one owner, 50K miles, and
was always garaged. The owner was asking $3000. The second one had
more miles (91K) but was in very good shape. The interior looked like
a brand new car. This one was $3250. Mechanically both cars were
sound, as far as we novices could tell, anyway.
> Overall, I don't trust the guy very much, but love the car. I think he's one
> of these chaps who buys a car in very poor shape, fixes it up, and sells
> quickly for a profit.
Uh-oh. Bad vibes. If you don't trust the guy, don't buy the car from
him! We encountered one salesman during our car hunt who was a total
slime. He and a mechanic buddy of his were in the business of
restoring and selling MG's. He made all kinds of promises, like that
if we were unhappy with the car, we could sell it back to him at the
price we bought it after six months (provided that it was "well maintained"
-- he wouldn't give that to us in writing.) When we asked if we
could take the car to a mechanic to have it checked out, he refused.
And then he acted like our request was something outrageous, "No one's
ever done this to me before! You people scare me!"
My advice would be to shop around a little bit more. You might want to
watch the newspapers to get a feel for the range that MGB's are selling for
in your area.
Lydia Gregoret
gregoret@cgl.ucsf.edu
P.S. In the end we bought a '66 B.
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