Practically Used Homestead Wheels

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Locating A Good Used Vehicle

Time your search. Convertibles are expensive in early spring when the sap's rising in all life forms; 4WD truck prices cycle in reverse. In November, many $2,000 trucks are fitted with $800 snow plows and offered for $4,999.

Look for your dream car or truck in the classifieds, in newsstand "auto market" magazines, on bulletin boards, and in back of barns, garages, and repair shops. Avoid new dealerships that charge top dollar for late-model "cream puffs." They wholesale older cars to auction ...which is where used-car dealers get most of their stock. Either type lot has to make money and you are better off with a private purchase. Hundreds of thousands of well-loved and well-maintained old cars languish in garages across the nation. Owners are loath to trade them for a new car, as the trade-in value is zilch. But when the garage gets too full, the cars go on the market somewhere between wholesale and top collector special interest car price.

Condition of collector cars is rated between #1 (show quality/never driven) through #3 and #4 (best for daily use) to #6, a literal basket case. For example, the Buick GS 455 Stage 1 is a Muscle Car with awesome power. But it got little pub licity. Today's prices for a '70 convertible are: #6: $760; #5: $2,300; #4: $3,800; #3: $7,600; #2: $14,000; #1: $20,000.

Prices for a better-known car, say a '70 Mustang Boss 429 ragtop, range from $2,000 for #6/boxes of parts, to almost $60,000 for a #1 show car—although the Buick GS is bigger and better built and can dust it in the high gears.

A just slightly less muscular but much less popular '70 Dodge Dart Swinger 340 hardtop ranges from $135 to $6,500. For $2,500 you can get one in #3 "very good" condition, which means it is original or an older restoration that looks almost new, runs perfectly, and will get to the next stoplight just a few seconds behind the Boss and GS but using half the gas.

Fuel Economy and Used Cars

But don't old cars waste limited petroleum and pollute our air and water? Yes and no. Nobody should operate a gas-guzzling, oil-dripping, smoke-billowing Bunker except to get it to a mechanic or junkyard. But, when run hot over country distances and at road speed, a properly maintained-and-tuned older car is cleaner than a poorly maintained new model.

Only when large numbers of city cars stop and go without driving far enough to warm up, then idle at stoplights or inch along in urban gridlock, do pollutants buildup (and when EGR valves open, computers earn their keep, and catalytic converters light).

Across this huge nation, only Los Angeles County in California continues to have intractable air quality problems. Still, the EPA wants to impose the (super-strict, yet ineffective) California standard nationwide—when bath nuisance value and cost far exceeds any environmental benefit.

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