Brads911sc

I am not a newbie. This is my 3rd 911 as well... and its a show stopper for me, unless there is documentation... and at the buy it now price... it would def be a show stopper even if there was documentation. just my .02.

Amber Gramps

Upon review of the play I'd call this fraud. Wrong spedo for sure.

Trader220

I got a mildly nasty email from the seller but he did say he would look into it

andrew911

got a somewhat nasty e-mail as well- someone should report this fraud.

Brads911sc

I did report this to Evilbay. Just an automated email back. Probably never hear again, but I can see why he would be hostile if he got an "informational" email from Evilbay.

theiceman

and you even have the period correct cell phone ..

theiceman

and while were talkin about it ......

What's with the Phrase " original miles " ?

I see it used a lot .. is it an Amercanism ? as oppose to what .. non original miles . ? so if you don't say original miles people assume you switched the odometer

I saw one the other day that made me laugh : 35,000 absolutely original miles ! . I really had to thiink about what the difference was between that and 35,000 miles.

So if I don't say 35,000 original miles i am really saying 35,000 non original miles. wouldn't i just say the speedo or cable never broke ever ?

well I guess I could say just before listing it the speedo cable broke .

oh well, musings for a Friday afternoon I guess

Trader220

Car was sold new at Cherry Hill Imports in April of 1989. I grew up near there, I know the current owners of the place well. I ran the vin number through the Porsche system but its too old to be in the PCNA data base. Anyone could call CHI and give them the Vin number for any service records they have. Suspension been slammed too.

Paul523

Probably more drama than it's worth, but maybe we'll save someone getting burned...... a couple of days ago I phoned the seller "Dan" directly.
Here is a partial, painful synopsis of our phone conversation:

(paraphrasing)

Me- "...my wife, my two little ones and I are flying into W. Palm Beach this weekend for a couple weeks of vacationing around Florida (all true, although in truth I won't be pursuing this '89 Targa deal), ..."I might be interested in making the drive over to Naples to look at your '89 Targa before the Ebay auction ends if you're available."


Dan- " let me check with my friend Mark who is the owner of the car to see if we could look at the car at his warehouse".


Me- "...sorry I was under the impression that the car was at your dealership?"


Dan- "..(sounding annoyed)- you must not have read my ad; It's not my car, I'm selling it FOR SOMEONE ELSE...you didn't read my ad, did you? It's not my car..."


Me- "... my mistake then-- I DID READ your ad about selling for someone else, but you mentioned in the Ebay ad that you're a dealer, & it looks like the Porsche Ebay photos were taken on the same lawn/ staging area as some of your other vehicle listings, I'd assumed that you had the Porsche in your possession at your dealership...........................................................how long has Mark owned this car?"


Dan- "he's owned it 3 or 4 years, his uncle owned it for 5 or 6 years before that. He's the third owner. Mark has only put maybe 500 miles on it during the entire time he's owned it. When do you want to see it?"


Me- " Before I trek over to Naples there is one critical issue that I want to get clarification on .... the photos in the ad indicate the speedometer is from an earlier Porsche 911..."


Dan- "yeah I have gotten (7) emails claiming the same thing.(Rennlisters!). I'm doing my homework, I'm looking into that with Mark- the car's owner".


Me- "...ok, good-- then please let me know the INSTANT that you find a paper trail on the replacement speedo......we'll be within striking distance of Naples starting later this weekend; but do you understand that HALF of this particular '89 Porsche Targa's appeal is the low 36K miles, so you can understand the importance of verifying the odometer thing?"


Dan- "Well I can tell from the car's CONDITION that the mileage is real....you just can't have a car look like this unless it's low miles...."


Me- " uhh, may be so--- which is why I would think they MUST HAVE some documentation of the speedometer changeout in their records or at the dealer or somewhere....


Dan: "Listen, I'll stop the Ebay ad if I find out that it's not true mileage"..... (then repeating earlier sttmt)>> " Mark probably only put 500 miles on the car the whole time he owned it... hey I DON'T NEED THE MONEY, I am selling the car for him... I will do my homework to find out....and by the way I have already had several offers of $25K from people who haven't mentioned anything about the speedometer....not everybody cares about this..."


Me- "hmm.. or it's possible they may just not REALIZE-- if you now know that you are dealing with a replacement speedo, to be fair shouldn't you either provide docs of the speedometer service whenever it broke and a swap occurred, immediately making it virtually a non-issue; or disclose that the car has a replacement speedo but based on your mechanic's assessment or whatever, the mechanical/cosmetic condition the 36K indicated appears to be correct blah blah...."


Dan- "When you see the car's condition, it HAS TO mean the mileage is correct.....There's no way the mileage is not correct when you see the condition..... and I DON'T NEED THE MONEY, I'm selling it for my friend so it is MY name on the line, too..."


Me- "...of course it is, and in the pics the Porsche looks like it's in excellent shape....but for me personally and I know for many others as well, I'd need to know for sure the odometer status one way or the other--- it's only fair to all parties involved, right?.... otherwise you risk your good name or God forbid get into a pickle with your Florida dealer's license or who knows...."

___ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


Don't think he liked that last part, although I was nothing but polite and diplomatic. I'm pretty sure Dan was less than enthused by the overall tenor of our conversation lol. I gave Dan my contact information to notify me immed. upon locating any info. or paperwork re: speedometer; have not heard anything back from him.

Barring a mindbendingly stellar PPI, personally I would steer clear of this at anything over abt $17K-$18K unless he finds documentation.

I notified Ebay also. Their bozo automated-everything system isn't set up for this. Seems like a buyer's recourse may only come after the fact... and a technically-oblivious buyer would effectively forfeit their recourse, likely discovering the odometer glitch only years from now when they eventually re-sell this car and the mileage issue is resurrected.

I will not say definitively that the seller won't take the ethically appropriate action. But in order to maintain the integrity of their own product, Ebay should police exactly this type of thing, esp. since the seller at this point would apparently concede to anyone --as he did freely to me on the phone-- his full awareness of a non-original odometer.

Ebay unfortunately may not have any car/savvy site managers on staff who could personally vett out the nuts and bolts of this..

This seller needs to EDIT his ad immediately to allow bid retractions, then post legible scans of paperwork to support a speedometer changeout, or else seller should cancel & relist anew with full disclosure about TMU. Hope I am wrong but I suspect the seller will do neither.

Jay H

Aren't these speedo's date stamped on the rear in green ink? My '84 is stamped with a date code that is close to the manufacture date of my car. One of my brother's '83 SC's had a different speedometer and it's date stamped with an 1984 date. You can yank these gauges out of the dash pretty quick to check that if one was really serious about the car and wanted a bit more data to make a decision on.

My '86 had the exact speedo as pictured on this eBay car. So, at least this speedo was in use up to '86.

3.2SLANTNOSE

The bottom line is that eBay does not really care too much about the people that get screwed over in a possible deal like this. They rather pull someones auction because they might mention a word or two in the listing, that eBay calls SPAM. I am sure you have seen the ads such as; 1997 BMW 750iL, not Porsche, MB, etc. Or they try to police the shipping charges and pull the listing because someone is charging what eBay's own shipping calculator is saying what the shipping charges should be. Never made much sense to me, but I have seen them do it.

Maybe all of this extra information has helped someone to really think about the possibilities with this 911.

Jay H

I don't think eBay has the man hours to police stuff like speedometer swaps. They can police other stuff like language in ads on their servers pretty easily, but expecting them to look at a speedometer in a 20 year old car for sale somewhere in the world (which is one of thousands of cars for sale on their site) and investigate if it's legit or not would take far too many resources and, let's face it, way too much money to enforce. It's no different than seeing this car in an ad in a newspaper. You have to do the research before you buy if you are worried about a potential problem.

As with everything, it's a buyer beware environment out there. You buy at your own risk.

whalebird

At least the guy could include the original speedometer in the sale. Never buy a car from e-bay, or at least an air cooled Porsche.

andrew911

OK, here's another one for your entertainment...I know these things in and out as I remember all the research I did back when I was working for years as a teenager trying to save up for my first 911. This is a euro car- note the "3" in the 4th VIN number denoting "rest of world" car- also, euro lights and euro smaller rear bumperetts. I had a euro which had the speedometer in KM, not MPH. Furthermore, this is a 1980's speedometer- the 1978 speedometer in MPH went to 150. I'm sure I could go on and on finding these MIS-REPRESENTATIONS on ebay and elsewhere.



http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Porsc...fCarsQ5fTrucks

whalebird

The euro cars are a double-edged sword. Usually a hotter tune in the ECU, They seem to have better response. Euro cars usually get trashed and have rust problems though. They make great track cars.