88 box wagon for sale in MD

[BerniniCaCO3]

http://baltimore.craigslist.org/cto/2992127754.html

Nothing special; just an inexpensive box wagon.
Looks like it got repainted at some point, no body damage, and it's in front of a clean house: so maybe it's been taken care of.

If you're interested, we can look at it together. I'm in the area. I ought to be qualified at this point to find the major faults.
Cars can't get much cheaper than $750 (scrap is $400 for almost anything); the only question is if it needs $1000 in work or $2000.

[sly]

passenger doors are pretty badly rippled there. Passenger side blinker lens is busted up too. Got some pretty big parking lot dings on the driver side and tailgate. The bumper hitch looks really rusty and so does the tailpipe (definitely need to have a look under that one). For the price, it's definitely good for a beater/work wagon/project car if it's solid underneath.

[miamibob]

Looks like somebody parked "by sound"!

[BerniniCaCO3]

ahh... sonar park assist!
fancy option for 1988!

[79lincolnlover]

ahh... sonar park assist!
fancy option for 1988!

[Ziggy]

I suspect the owners probably recently (within the last 12 months) moved to the Baltimore area from someplace that did not require an emissions inspection, and they think that the old car won't pass. It appears to have been in service probably right up until their out of state registration expired. Says "Runs and Drives", doesn't say it does either of those things well, LOL! Probably needs a tune up, brakes, exhaust, and tires.

[tjc78]

Well in all honesty like Bernini mentioned 750 is about as cheap as it gets today especially if it runs and drives at all. In this particular case if the car was decent enough I'm sure six new crisp $100 bills would do the deal!

[BerniniCaCO3]

in MD you just register it historic, and you're emissions exempt.
Lots of fools claiming you're "inspection exempt" too-- which is BS if you want to be road-legal. Presumably if you took your show car around in a trailer there's no safety inspection... but you can't have bald tires and leaking brake lines to drive any vehicle on public roads.
However, you can find a sticker mill if you know the (wrong?) people, slip the dude $200 and he gives it a pass and makes up some numbers for the paperwork (sure.... you've got 7mm on those pads! no lightbulbs out...).
Fines/crackdowns happen, and can be stiff, honestly, as it should be. I don't want to share the road with some of the things I've seen come into the shop (and then leave the shop again , balking at the $200 repair it needed!) either.


Where I might have a bone to pick is with the sometimes draconian details. Original equipment, safety-related, MUST be there and operational.
My car has one airbag, the airbag light is off (whether or not the airbag would actually deploy if I got into a serious accident... I have no idea and don't want to be in a position to find out).
woohoo! I pass.
But if you're a poor schmuck who bought an advanced vehicle with 7 airbags, and the light won't go out, and you've already replaced the passenger seat weight sensor twice and your shop has torn apart the interior tracing the wiring back to the control module and can't find any fault, and goddammit, you don't CARE about the passenger seat weight sensor because you commute by yourself, and you just want to legally drive your car... You see where I'm going.
Highly optioned vehicles can get expensive to keep all the warning lights out and all the fancy led lights on.

Mark viii's apparently had a problem with the very costly center rear LED brake light going out, and being a brake light-- safety concern. Never mind that both left and right brake bulbs also work and anyone can tell when you're braking, the center decorative brake light is there also as a brake light, so work it must.

My family had a '98 pontiac with a fog light that was dead for a $1000 reason (I don't know what: wasn't car savvy then, none of us really remember anything but the pricetag now). Sure it was a running car, but we scrapped it because no one would reasonably put in the money just in the fog light alone to pass MD safety inspection.


You also get into niggling details like bumper height, headlight positioning (if you added roof-top lights to your jeep, and it blinds fellow motorists), if you lowered or raised your suspension some details apply. I think lowriders have more trouble; if they can't go over every speed bump. But if you raised it more than some number of inches, too. Fellow lifted his chevy 2500 14", and thus had to tag and title it in delaware and not maryland.
Window tinting past 35% fails.
Etc.
So if someone in MD is selling a highly modified, hot looking sports coupe, beware: you could end up undoing the six grand in mods just to get plates on it, then redoing them after you pass!


It's more OCD than PA, BUT, MD state inspection is only at point of sale... so ironically we have more dangerous junkers on the roads than PA also, because the car last got inspected 8 years ago and the owner drove it into the ground, and can't ever sell it, because the next buyer will never be able to pass state inspection again!