Information gathering

The first thing I did was to check the sellers Facebook profile since it was set to public. Nothing indicated he was a "car guy". So I was very curious to understand how he got ahold of such car. Perhaps he recently bought a real estate and this car was still parked back in the garden, who knows?

It turned out he wasn't the owner but helping out someone else to sell it but it remained unclear who the actual owner was. We obtained some pictures of the French douane papers showing the car was imported into France in 1987. And we did also receive a picture of the UK registration document.

With help from someone else it was found out the car was still active registered in the UK and not marked as exported. Tax was due at 1 July 1984. Great, and we still didn't got any further clarity about the current owner.

And the seller was kind enough to make a small video about the car:

And a very few interior pictures as well

Any sane person would run a mile away from this car and then another mile, just to be sure.

Apparently this car had been parked outside for the past 30 years and not moved since. Adding the fact there are no carkeys, engine not running, rusted and overall deteriorated does not make it an attractive opportunity. Plus unclarity about ownership and how to get this car officially registered again. The latter might be a potential bureaucratic nightmare to arrange.

Still, if we could make a good price agreement we would consider it. So we had to do more checking with the seller and further negotiate the price. More on that on the next blog.