The 10 Best Places To Find An Affordable Classic Car Pt 9: Local, Free, Car Classified Magazines

Part IX:  4. Local, Free, Car Classified Magazines

These car classified publications are often overlooked as one of the best places to find affordable classic cars as people walk out of the grocery store. I’m talking about those weekly publications printed on low quality newsprint with blurry photos, typos in the descriptions, full of used car classifieds from local car dealers, franchised dealers all the way down to the bottom feeder dirt lots. Despite their shortcomings, these publications do sometimes contain ads for those affordable classic cars you wouldn’t expect to see in such a publication.

Late model Mercedes-Benz SL, worth a look.

Franchised dealers or run of the mill used car lots get all sorts of trade-ins. These dealers rarely pay much for an older car. Many times they don’t take into account the potential collectibility of a car when putting a price on someone’s trade in. They don’t want to overpay, they’d like to give the customer a safe trade-in value for a car they probably don’t really want anyway. High volume dealers don’t want to be slowed down by “just another old car” and therefore generally offer really low trade-in numbers so they can quickly flip the car without worrying about losing any money on the transaction.

Classic BMW 6 Series, bad wheels, but cheap.

This dynamic opens doors for the savvy buyer who understands these older affordable classic cars. I might be using the term “classic” loosely here. Let’s just say cars with character, special attributes or qualities that might make them good weekend drivers or club cars. There is a lot of junk to sort through in these publications before you find anything remotely interesting. I usually find one to three potentially interesting cars per issue of this sort of publication. It’s this kind of publication where I found the ad for the 1976 BMW 2002 I have been writing about in the Affordable Classic Tales section of the blog.

If you find something interesting you can usually approach a dealer for such a car with a low offer, I mean, go really low, chances are they didn’t pay much for the car. If you’re serious about a particular car be prepared to back up your offer and really be prepared to buy the car if they’ll sell it for your price. A high volume dealer doesn’t want their time wasted, they’d often rather do without any headaches that might arise from selling that 10, 15, or 20 year old car… the needs it may have, the thin market such a car might trade in. Tell them you’ll take it off their hands right then and there, as it is.

Classic VW Beetle Convertible among regular used cars.

Surely they’ll counter your offer, they have to on principle. Go back and forth a couple of times and you’ll quickly be able to tell if they own the car cheap enough to sell it to you for your price. If you have to, give them your phone number and tell them to give you a call if they decide later they want to take your offer. If they actually let you drive away you know you’re offer is too low.

These days, the only way you can leave a dealership without the car you want is if your offer to buy the car is truly a number they cannot live with. Circle back to the dealership if they haven’t called you in 15 minutes and ask them, “Honestly, what will you take for me to get this off your lot right now?”. The next number they give you will be the bottom line number and you can be sure you’re getting it for as low a price as you can. At this point… if you’ve come back a second time, and they’ve given you the bottom line number, on principle, you have to buy the car. If you don’t, you’re just wasting the dealer’s time and your own time kicking tires.

Franchised car dealers put huge amounts of money into advertising their cars for sale. These free publications that are at the exits of grocery and convenience stores are easy to pick up and easy to flip through, sift through the junk to encounter a few gems. Find out from the store manager when the new issues are distributed and swing by to pick them up early. Odd ball trade ins and cars dealers are looking to move quickly are precisely the kinds of affordable classic cars I personally love looking for. They don’t want the hassle of another old car, I don’t want to pay too much. I’m there to make their life easy, they’re looking to move an old car, if done correctly, everybody wins.