We’ve all been there. you are shop for your next carand you discover a great list, but something seems a little bit. Craigslist ad looks great, all the photos show an excellent looking car work normally, but there’s a nagging feeling in your mind that you just can’t seem to get rid of. Something is not right.
You rescan the ad, flip through all the photos and then you see it. The red flag, the weird thing that makes the whole deal seem too good to be true. You close the list and move on to the next one, but what’s the point? Which red flag kicked you out of the car?
The red flag that always seems to get my attention is any problem with the car position. I grew up in Connecticut, a state that doesn’t grant titles to “classic” cars, so I’m used to figuring out how new car registration without that important piece of paper. But when browsing the AE86es or S-chassis on the Facebook Marketplace, you might find a more dangerous header problem: Open headers.
This is when, in a previous transaction, seller sign ownership, but the buyer never does (usually to avoid paying state sales tax or add another “owner” to the history of the vehicle they intend to transfer). Instead, they sell the car to someone else, who sells it to the next, and so on. Finally, you stumble across a clean hachiroku on Marketplace, but the title is six owners and three old states — God help you if you ever try to register that thing.
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That’s my biggest red flag, the one that will always turn me off from a purchase. But what’s yours? Have you bought too many rusted-out New England cars to ever shop in the Northeast again? Are you suspicious of anything modified that might not pass smog? Leave your replies in the comments, and we’ll collect our favorites to discuss tomorrow afternoon.
