Road Trip! Why fly? Buy a Beater
October 2012.
I was in the car business at the time buying and selling “modern classics” from the 1970s to the 1990s. My business partner and I flew to Las Vegas and drove to Phoenix and Tucson looking for rust-free cars to bring home and resell, inspecting late model BMW 7-series, Mercedes S-classes, and 1970s BMW 2002s.
Overpriced.
Repainted. Ugly wheels.
Overpriced.
Also overpriced.
Interesting! Owned by an enthusiast in the Los Angeles area.
Fast Tube by Casper
Fast Tube by Casper
Went down to Tucson to look at this one.
Fast Tube by Casper
After a week we found nothing to our price/condition satisfaction and had no flights booked for our return trip, expecting to drive home from Phoenix to St Louis in whatever we purchased. Instead of wasting $600 on two last minute tickets home, I proposed we buy a car for roughly the same price, drive it all the way home, and sell it. Top Gear style!
Of course, anything could go wrong. Once you get below $1000 used cars come with mysterious issues from a dozen previous owners — aging cooling systems, dry rotted tires and brake lines, and belts and pulleys on their last leg not to mention biological hazards. Anyone who drives a car worth a grand likely spends the smallest amount of money possible to use it locally. Sometimes you find used pipes, pills, strip club ads, bitter love letters, or any evidence of hard living.
Ian was skeptical. If the car broke down we’d be out the money spent and still have to book Amtrak or a plane ticket home. My solution? I’ll pay out of pocket instead of drawing from the business. Risk assumed, problem solved! And the profit was mine to keep.
The first car I found on Craigslist was a decent looking 1979 Ford LTD. For $900 it looked promising, drenched inside and out in a hideous shade of pale seafoam green, magnificent in the worst possible way. It started up immediately but couldn’t maintain an idle, misfiring and shutting down after I took my foot off the throttle. Today, with the growing popularity of mundane Carter-era malaise cars, it would have sold for $2000 as-is. Back then it was just another used, inches-from-the-crusher junk car.
They also had a gold C-body Cadillac Deville in nice shape but it was triple what I wanted to spend and I probably would have kept it, negating the flip-for-profit challenge.
Fast Tube by Casper
I was holding out for dependable, comfortable transportation under $1000 that I could trust through desolate parts of the American desert with no wireless signal, no people, and limited services. While asking for the impossible, I also wanted to find something with a trunk full of gold bars and ribeye steaks.
Later that night I called about a ’92 Buick Riviera with 119,000 miles asking $1000. It was even better in person with shiny paint, functional digital gauges, a silky smooth four-speed automatic, and clean upholstery. The headliner was gone, wheel covers were missing, and the air conditioning didn’t work, but it drove like buttered bread. I got him down to $800.
I learned that some of Arizona’s check cashing shops, open 24 hours a day, double as title services. I was able to register the car in my name, pay all fees, and get rolling with a temp tag the same night. Wonderfully convenient. I added the Buick to my Geico policy and we hit the road, turning in our Ford Fusion rental car and rolling east on I-10. Too late to turn back! This was happening.
The first thing I did was pick up some wheel covers. An early 90s pseudo-lux coupe deserves something shiny so we stopped at a Wal-Mart and found a set of plastichrome covers for $15 each. From the outside this was already looking like a $2500 car.
In the daylight I expected disappointment. Instead, the paint proved to be resilient with decent clear coat and all badges and trim in tact. The windshield had a large crack, a side mirror was cracked, and a rocker area was discolored. Otherwise the interior was clean and presentable except for the headliner.
GM headliner is notoriously terrible and someone decided to rip it out, leaving behind the fibrous backing material. Over every bump the roof rained orange dust on our heads and shoulders, like nuclear fallout at Chernobyl. Thankfully, Buick’s pillowy Dynaride suspension kept the pavement impacts to a minimum. At every fuel stop we patted down our heads and shoulders like we’d just walked out of a coal mine.
We checked into a motel somewhere in the desert in a town I can’t recall. It was clean, free of bugs, and only $40 a night. That was good enough for me.
At the next fuel stop I calculated our fuel economy: 23.5mpg at 75-85mph. Not bad!
The desert was scenic but empty, peaceful in its geographic abundance and lack of congestion. Outside of Phoenix and Vegas you feel like you’ve stepped on to another planet. You really are alone out there, for better or worse. It’s both lonely and refreshing.
The Riviera’s digital gauges, also found in Oldsmobiles and other GM vehicles of the era, are a bit excessive at night. They’re clean and readable but even with the brightness turned down they seem to pierce your eyeballs. And if they’re going to be digital, why bother emulating the shape of traditional round instruments? It was a missed opportunity to do something more creative. I feel the same way about modern LCD gauges.
Other electronics were fully in tact. Power windows, mirrors, and locks worked perfectly. The Delco radio sounded fine but it refused to work with our cassette adapter. We didn’t have an FM modulator handy so for hours we roamed in silence, forced to talk to each other like friends. Ugh.
Fast Tube by Casper
Expectedly, the air conditioning didn’t work. I didn’t bother charging it or doing any troubleshooting since it was October and outdoor temperatures were perfectly comfortable, plus by the time we got home we’d be back below the 60s.
After a couple nights we made it to Texas and stopped at Cooper’s for barbecue. Try the sausage! Their cole slaw is finely shopped with sweet dressing and service was excellent.
In Oklahoma City we stopped to see my friends, Terry and Jessica, where I sampled a bacon soda. Imagine bacon, liquified and bubbly, but sweet instead of savory. Sounds terrible? That’s because it is.
We finally joined I-44 and made it back to St Louis. Absolutely nothing went wrong. The dumpster Riviera was pleasant, comfortable, and entirely uneventful. I never had to top off any fluids, the ride and handling were smooth as silk, and we both traveled in complete comfort. After replacing a harmonic balancer bushing, a passenger side mirror (just the glass piece), and two rubber brake lanes I passed the state inspection and listed it for sale. A nice fellow in south city purchased it for $1200.
Later that year I ran into him at a stoplight. He said he loved the car and I continued to see it roaming around the city or parked outside his place. I haven’t checked on it since I moved to Michigan in 2015 but I suspect someone out there is still enjoying it.
These are incredibly resilient cars with bulletproof powertrains and excellent exterior build quality. Aside from the plasticky but comfortable interiors they make for excellent daily drivers. GM’s 3.8L V6 isn’t much for character nor does it make any interesting sounds from the intake or exhaust, but torque peaks right in the middle of the power band, perfect for highway cruising and darting through city traffic.
I wanted to have a more dramatic story involving belching radiators, tow trucks, check engine lights, weird noises, or engine fires, but this is the best I could do with the most reliable coupe on the planet. If you’re looking for a cheap and comfortable way to travel and don’t mind replacing headliners or interior trim, look for a Riviera or Toronado.
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