Quote:
Originally Posted by spacemanspif
Maybe I'm missing something but a 30 year old car that has rust and dents and is worn and torn from being a DD in salty winters isn't worth $5000 no matter how "excellent" the service history. Have you checked KBB or other sources for "book" value?
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To be honest if I didn't know what these cars were, I'd think the exact same thing! That's how I missed out on the $300 one years ago, I knew it was something, but didn't research it til I got home. Cliffs notes version - an AE86 is an iconic car in performance car culture, especially in Japan, but pretty much everywhere now. If you are old and from North America like me, it's something like the '55 Chev from American Graffiti/Two Lane Blacktop, or the Bullitt Mustang, or the General Lee Charger. The main difference is that the AE86 was actually a spectacular car for what it was! (OK the Two Lane Blacktop car was a properly built drag car, but it was a one off not a production model). There is an Initial D clone that runs around Richmond where I live in the summer that is show quality, I can honestly say that it has some of the nicest body and paint work I have ever seen, someone lost their fingerprints with all the block sanding and wet sanding they did on that car! So when I hear about a nice one selling for a lot of money, I picture that thing in my head, but the paint and bodywork on that one was probably $10k.
I guess the thing I have to get my head around is that an old Toyota is like muscle cars when I was in my teens/20s. I had a '70 Nova SS that was junk, but it was a real SS. You could buy a cheap one like mine, but you'd spend 5 times that much making it nice. Or you could just buy a nice one for not a more money. A decade later though, all of a sudden all the slightly more expensive nice ones were $20k. I paid $1700 for mine! So that $5k AE86 now is nowhere near the quality of the $20k ones. But you'd never find that car again, and I think that has a value. There is a lot of money in the car culture, be it muscle cars, supercars, customs, whatever. Dropping $5k on an old Toyota that needs a semi restoration sounds pretty crazy, but if I had bought the clean '69 Nova SS, numbers matching 4 speed for $3800 when I could have (that was a lot of money then), it would have been a smart thing to do. Of course, you only make money when you sell something, and I don't think you'd ever pry his car out of my cold dead hands if he sold it to me haha.
