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Story time.
As many of you know (and as I in fact announced in this journal) I have of late been endeavoring to buy a car. Specifically I have been scrutinizing a 1999 Subaru Outback with about 74,000 miles on it being privately sold for a small chunk less than KBB value. My father and I both speculated that must mean there's something wrong with the car, but nevertheless I decided to go and have a look at it -- after all, a Carfax report on the thing came back clean aside from the fact that its current owner had only purchased it this past summer. The car's owner is a guy improbably named (and this is the part of the story I couldn't have made up if I tried) Girts Zukovs. It looked and in fact test drove really nice and aside from the fact that the owner spoke only by mumbling through a thick Eastern European accent and drove the car with relentless and reckless acceleration I found myself quite interested in buying the car for a bargained-down price of $7,500 before sales tax. So I made arrangements for the car to be checked out by the family mechanic, a really nice guy named Jack we've been doing business with for twenty years.
Jack revealed to me that in his expert opinion Girts was involved with the Russian mob. He had seen this sort of car before; the local Slavic-American organized crime syndicate apparently engages in a practice which is for some reason colloquially known as "horse trading." Its shady but not technically illegal. What happens is this: the group seeks out and buys so-called "distressed cars" and has the title registered in the name of one of their low-level peons (like our friend Girts.) Then they perform the minimum amount of maintenance necessary to make the car seem like its in perfect condition at a glance, clean it up real nice, make sure they've waited at least a couple months and then try and resell the car. So Jack was able to present me with a laundry list of things wrong with or about to go wrong with the car, ranging from the minor and relatively innocuous like it needs new windshield wiper blades and tires to the fact that the head of the engine had been recently and rather hastily replaced entirely.
Now I have to find a new used car to be interested in.
As many of you know (and as I in fact announced in this journal) I have of late been endeavoring to buy a car. Specifically I have been scrutinizing a 1999 Subaru Outback with about 74,000 miles on it being privately sold for a small chunk less than KBB value. My father and I both speculated that must mean there's something wrong with the car, but nevertheless I decided to go and have a look at it -- after all, a Carfax report on the thing came back clean aside from the fact that its current owner had only purchased it this past summer. The car's owner is a guy improbably named (and this is the part of the story I couldn't have made up if I tried) Girts Zukovs. It looked and in fact test drove really nice and aside from the fact that the owner spoke only by mumbling through a thick Eastern European accent and drove the car with relentless and reckless acceleration I found myself quite interested in buying the car for a bargained-down price of $7,500 before sales tax. So I made arrangements for the car to be checked out by the family mechanic, a really nice guy named Jack we've been doing business with for twenty years.
Jack revealed to me that in his expert opinion Girts was involved with the Russian mob. He had seen this sort of car before; the local Slavic-American organized crime syndicate apparently engages in a practice which is for some reason colloquially known as "horse trading." Its shady but not technically illegal. What happens is this: the group seeks out and buys so-called "distressed cars" and has the title registered in the name of one of their low-level peons (like our friend Girts.) Then they perform the minimum amount of maintenance necessary to make the car seem like its in perfect condition at a glance, clean it up real nice, make sure they've waited at least a couple months and then try and resell the car. So Jack was able to present me with a laundry list of things wrong with or about to go wrong with the car, ranging from the minor and relatively innocuous like it needs new windshield wiper blades and tires to the fact that the head of the engine had been recently and rather hastily replaced entirely.
Now I have to find a new used car to be interested in.
