TurboMinivan
Still plays with cars
- Location
- Lehi, UT
(I share this story here because I thought it might give some of you a good chuckle.)
As I've said many times, my friend Mike and I are co-workers. Well, we have a newish co-worker, Ryan (he's been with us 8 or 9 months). Ryan is hilarious to hang out with and an all-around great guy, but he knows zero about wrenching on cars. Zero. He sees Mike and I and all of our car adventures, and he constantly marvels, "wow--I wish I could do that." It's easy, we tell him. Just buy a car and dive in--that's how you learn. That's how we learned. But he has always been hesitant. Meanwhile, he drives everywhere in his trusty little Kia Soul.
A couple Saturdays ago late in the afternoon, things get a bit quiet on the showroom. Ryan decides to take a new WRX for a test drive since he's never actually driven one except for across the parking lot. He comes back, and he is positively beaming. "Wow, that was fun! I ought to buy one of those." Immediately, Mike and I jump in. No, no, no. If you wanna have fun with a fast car, don't buy anything new. Instead, join our club: buy an old car and build it into whatever you want. "Yeah, but I have no idea what to do or how to do it." No problem--we'll help you. Here, let's start right now by finding you a cheap car to buy.
And with that, the three of us sat down and each one of us began scouring the KSL classifieds. Mike laid the ground rules: any GM brand is okay, so long as it is RWD and at least offered a V8 engine option. Between us we look through hundreds of ads, testing to see what Ryan likes and doesn't like. Some things we think he might like he totally rejects (such as a clean 1980 Firebird); some things he likes but so does everybody and thus the price is way too high (like a '70 Nova SS). On and on we go, with Ryan rejecting everything we show him. But then I find an ad for a car that I positively love (at least in concept), so I innocently ask aloud, "say, how do you feel about a wagon?" Turns out he likes that idea, and asks what I found. I show him the ad, and immediately he is in love.
It's a 1988 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser in yellow beige with no woodgrain. (Sorry--like a dolt I completely forgot to save the photo from the ad.)
Ad says the engine is seized but the interior and exterior are very good, and the list price is $700. We contact the seller and find out he can't meet us until Monday night. So Monday after work, the three of us pile into Mike's Suburban (with trailer attached) and head north to check it out. On the way, Mike coaches Ryan on some of the finer points of price negotiation. We do find out that Ryan is mentally fine with spending the full $700 asking price, and he has that much cash with him. He is trusting the two of us to verify the car is solid and worth buying, so we're kinda all in this together.
When we arrive, the second we get out of the Suburban and lay eyes on the wagon, Mike quickly (and very quietly) tells Ryan, "this is easily worth their asking price." I proceed to crawl under it with a flashlight, and everything is solid. In fact, there is hardly a spec of rust anywhere on it. One or two small scrapes, but Mike surmises a couple hours with a buffer could make the paint shine like new. The interior is damn near mint--no seat rips, only one dash crack, and we are overjoyed to see the rear-facing third row seat option. By now, all three of us are salivating over the thing. After our extended check-over, we tell Ryan if he gets the car for anything less than their list price, it's a win. After a couple minutes of talking, he gets them to accept $600 and they sign over the title.
Now we just need to load the 4200-lb behemoth onto Mike's trailer. It barely fits.
We happily tow it to our car farm (aka, Mike's back yard), and carefully unload it into an open spot. I went by the next day to get more photos in the daylight. Again, the body is pretty solid all around.
Ryan is over the moon about the flawless bench seat interior.
One of my personal favorites is the optional extra gauge package this car has. I know that Oldsmobile never used the word Rallye in reference to the wagon's gauges, but in some other cars GM would often refer to the optional upgrade as the Rallye gauges. For that reason, I keep calling this the optional Rallye Fun Pack:
We are all completely excited about this. We won't even bother trying to diagnose the dead 307 4bbl engine. It will simply get yanked, and we'll install something better in its place. Another co-worker has a Gen VI 454 sitting in his garage, so that is our top contender at the moment. We don't expect the wagon's stock 200-4R transmission to live behind a big block so we'll probably also swap in a 4L80E while we're at it. We'll see.
Oh, the fun we're going to have.
As I've said many times, my friend Mike and I are co-workers. Well, we have a newish co-worker, Ryan (he's been with us 8 or 9 months). Ryan is hilarious to hang out with and an all-around great guy, but he knows zero about wrenching on cars. Zero. He sees Mike and I and all of our car adventures, and he constantly marvels, "wow--I wish I could do that." It's easy, we tell him. Just buy a car and dive in--that's how you learn. That's how we learned. But he has always been hesitant. Meanwhile, he drives everywhere in his trusty little Kia Soul.
A couple Saturdays ago late in the afternoon, things get a bit quiet on the showroom. Ryan decides to take a new WRX for a test drive since he's never actually driven one except for across the parking lot. He comes back, and he is positively beaming. "Wow, that was fun! I ought to buy one of those." Immediately, Mike and I jump in. No, no, no. If you wanna have fun with a fast car, don't buy anything new. Instead, join our club: buy an old car and build it into whatever you want. "Yeah, but I have no idea what to do or how to do it." No problem--we'll help you. Here, let's start right now by finding you a cheap car to buy.
And with that, the three of us sat down and each one of us began scouring the KSL classifieds. Mike laid the ground rules: any GM brand is okay, so long as it is RWD and at least offered a V8 engine option. Between us we look through hundreds of ads, testing to see what Ryan likes and doesn't like. Some things we think he might like he totally rejects (such as a clean 1980 Firebird); some things he likes but so does everybody and thus the price is way too high (like a '70 Nova SS). On and on we go, with Ryan rejecting everything we show him. But then I find an ad for a car that I positively love (at least in concept), so I innocently ask aloud, "say, how do you feel about a wagon?" Turns out he likes that idea, and asks what I found. I show him the ad, and immediately he is in love.
It's a 1988 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser in yellow beige with no woodgrain. (Sorry--like a dolt I completely forgot to save the photo from the ad.)
Ad says the engine is seized but the interior and exterior are very good, and the list price is $700. We contact the seller and find out he can't meet us until Monday night. So Monday after work, the three of us pile into Mike's Suburban (with trailer attached) and head north to check it out. On the way, Mike coaches Ryan on some of the finer points of price negotiation. We do find out that Ryan is mentally fine with spending the full $700 asking price, and he has that much cash with him. He is trusting the two of us to verify the car is solid and worth buying, so we're kinda all in this together.
When we arrive, the second we get out of the Suburban and lay eyes on the wagon, Mike quickly (and very quietly) tells Ryan, "this is easily worth their asking price." I proceed to crawl under it with a flashlight, and everything is solid. In fact, there is hardly a spec of rust anywhere on it. One or two small scrapes, but Mike surmises a couple hours with a buffer could make the paint shine like new. The interior is damn near mint--no seat rips, only one dash crack, and we are overjoyed to see the rear-facing third row seat option. By now, all three of us are salivating over the thing. After our extended check-over, we tell Ryan if he gets the car for anything less than their list price, it's a win. After a couple minutes of talking, he gets them to accept $600 and they sign over the title.
Now we just need to load the 4200-lb behemoth onto Mike's trailer. It barely fits.
We happily tow it to our car farm (aka, Mike's back yard), and carefully unload it into an open spot. I went by the next day to get more photos in the daylight. Again, the body is pretty solid all around.
Ryan is over the moon about the flawless bench seat interior.
One of my personal favorites is the optional extra gauge package this car has. I know that Oldsmobile never used the word Rallye in reference to the wagon's gauges, but in some other cars GM would often refer to the optional upgrade as the Rallye gauges. For that reason, I keep calling this the optional Rallye Fun Pack:
We are all completely excited about this. We won't even bother trying to diagnose the dead 307 4bbl engine. It will simply get yanked, and we'll install something better in its place. Another co-worker has a Gen VI 454 sitting in his garage, so that is our top contender at the moment. We don't expect the wagon's stock 200-4R transmission to live behind a big block so we'll probably also swap in a 4L80E while we're at it. We'll see.
Oh, the fun we're going to have.
