- Location
- Allen, Texas
So, there I was, at work, drinking coffee and crusing the classified ads, looking for something to appease my rampant and well documented need for a new project, pretty much constantly.
Literally me:
This time, my ADD had me looking for something fun to thinker on and a cheap daily beater to get better mileage than the 15 ish the Xterra gets. Historically, I always bought shiatty commuters, fixed them while i commuted, and once they were solid, I sold it, made a profit and started over. But I haven't done that in a long long time, so I thought it would be time to revisit a favorite pasttime of mine.
Bored with the classifieds, and with a pocket o cash (well, like $650) from selling the wrecked Xterra, I cruised over to the municipal auction site, and sifted through a bunch of wrecks, junk, seizure SUVs and big body cars with 24" rims and dubious criminal pasts plus the normal derlicts and detritus before I stumbled onto what appeared to be a pretty clean little Focus hatch. I used to daily a 5spd, 01 Focus Sedan which i liked, and which got 30mpg+ so, with that, and a deep unrealized love of manual transmission hatches, I decide to bid.
Now. Like any salvage auction, its a crapshoot. Will i luck out? Will i crap out? Will the motor be locked up and will it smell like something crawled up something else's ass and died inside?
I dont know. But, I was willing to bid up to $500 to have the luxury of finding out. The auction was kind enough to provide three pictures.
What I was able to determine from those pictures was very limited. I did however observe that at some point, my little hatch to be, had been bizarrely involved in the losing end of a gun battle; RIP to the back window. So, while in my coffee fueled mania, I submitted a bid of $300.
And I waited the 10 days the auction ran, with no one bidding. I thought, the only thing better than a shot up $500 sh*t box beater, is a $300 sh*t box beater. But at the last hour, someone started bidding against me. By that point, the compass of my automotive ADD had swung in a (several) different directions so I really wasnt upset. I still wanted it, but when the description says "does not run, does not have keys, history unknown" you dont gamble much. With five minutes left, I was the high bidder at $500. Trust me when I tell you if the mystery bidder had bid even one dollar more, I would have walked away.
But, lucky(?) for me, mystery bidder 12469 didnt.
So now that I was contractually obligated to purchase lot C401261, I decided to run the vin. Interestingly enough, Carfax says it had two owners, both in Sparks, Nevada, both who had it maintained at Jones West Ford in Reno, NV. Through some other deep vin number research that Prime knows about, I found that the last registered mileage was 65,327 in Aug. 2022, to an 80 year old man, and that it had been seized by law enforcement as abandoned in January of 2024 in Dallas.
So where had the little Focus been for seventeen months, how did it end up in Dallas, shot up, broke down and abandoned and how many miles were on it now?
Literally me:
This time, my ADD had me looking for something fun to thinker on and a cheap daily beater to get better mileage than the 15 ish the Xterra gets. Historically, I always bought shiatty commuters, fixed them while i commuted, and once they were solid, I sold it, made a profit and started over. But I haven't done that in a long long time, so I thought it would be time to revisit a favorite pasttime of mine.
Bored with the classifieds, and with a pocket o cash (well, like $650) from selling the wrecked Xterra, I cruised over to the municipal auction site, and sifted through a bunch of wrecks, junk, seizure SUVs and big body cars with 24" rims and dubious criminal pasts plus the normal derlicts and detritus before I stumbled onto what appeared to be a pretty clean little Focus hatch. I used to daily a 5spd, 01 Focus Sedan which i liked, and which got 30mpg+ so, with that, and a deep unrealized love of manual transmission hatches, I decide to bid.
Now. Like any salvage auction, its a crapshoot. Will i luck out? Will i crap out? Will the motor be locked up and will it smell like something crawled up something else's ass and died inside?
I dont know. But, I was willing to bid up to $500 to have the luxury of finding out. The auction was kind enough to provide three pictures.
What I was able to determine from those pictures was very limited. I did however observe that at some point, my little hatch to be, had been bizarrely involved in the losing end of a gun battle; RIP to the back window. So, while in my coffee fueled mania, I submitted a bid of $300.
And I waited the 10 days the auction ran, with no one bidding. I thought, the only thing better than a shot up $500 sh*t box beater, is a $300 sh*t box beater. But at the last hour, someone started bidding against me. By that point, the compass of my automotive ADD had swung in a (several) different directions so I really wasnt upset. I still wanted it, but when the description says "does not run, does not have keys, history unknown" you dont gamble much. With five minutes left, I was the high bidder at $500. Trust me when I tell you if the mystery bidder had bid even one dollar more, I would have walked away.
But, lucky(?) for me, mystery bidder 12469 didnt.
So now that I was contractually obligated to purchase lot C401261, I decided to run the vin. Interestingly enough, Carfax says it had two owners, both in Sparks, Nevada, both who had it maintained at Jones West Ford in Reno, NV. Through some other deep vin number research that Prime knows about, I found that the last registered mileage was 65,327 in Aug. 2022, to an 80 year old man, and that it had been seized by law enforcement as abandoned in January of 2024 in Dallas.
So where had the little Focus been for seventeen months, how did it end up in Dallas, shot up, broke down and abandoned and how many miles were on it now?
