Buying and Selling Ferrari Project Cars is Hard

was that this prominent anesthesiologist in Atlanta had gotten in trouble for tax fraud [Music] [Applause] [Music] so a few years back I think I was just going into college at the time maybe an end of high school and I was hyper interested in fixing up a car right before this I had done what's called a KITT car I didn't have any sort of high budget so I was just thinking how do I get myself in one of these cars and the first video that ever made me like a car get my eyes on a car was when I was in sixth grade and it turned out it was a Lamborghini guy wrote a replica in England and keep in mind I had no idea what the difference between a guy order replica was and a real one I knew what a kit car was all of a sudden before I was really in the car community and so when I was really young before I could drive I was going into seventh grade my older siblings had just got in cars and I said okay if I buy an old toyota mr2 Spyder do all this work by this Ferrari 360 body kit put it on the card I'll basically end up with four or five years of just experience fixing the car a lot of fun and something that ultimately looks like a Ferrari 360 now I went through that for about three or four years until at the point when it actually drove and looked like a Ferrari 360 before being painted my parents realized are we really about to let our 16 year old son get in a car he just built in the garage and go drive it absolutely not in the end I was very glad because today I would not wanted to pull up to any sort of car show or anywhere in a kit car or Ferrari replica and so I was really still interested in this idea of like flipping cars and repairing cars and I had an obsession with Ferrari at the time I just really loved Ferrari I liked classic Ferraris especially I was looking at a lot of three five fives a lot of testarossa's and I just saw these interesting Ferraris going for really compelling prices compared to what you would see anything new at and so I had known at this time from working on that car and a family friend a body shop for probably five or six years that we just knew really well and it's one of those body shops that they do extremely high quality work I'm not going to negate that at all it was one those repair shops that was behind this row of dealerships and so you know they just get things out the door fast they are masters of covering things up they have all the connections in the business because they can do any sort of repair you want and I've been going there for years knew them for years and after taking this project car is working on this kid car there a few times I'd seen this black Ferrari Testarossa they're just sitting behind their shop no cover over it for a long time and I asked him about it one time he told me it had been there for almost a year at this point it was beautiful nothing wrong with it and the interesting backstory all he knew at the time was that somebody had gotten in trouble with tax evasion and somehow the car ended up at his shop and was just sitting there and had an unpaid storage retention bill for the months and months that had been sitting there and he didn't know what to do with it months went by I kept going back I ended up selling the kit car is working on but was still interested and how can I fix up some sort of Ferrari flip it and have it for a little while and just have a fun time working on cars and one time I went back in the Ferrari Testarossa as I casually wandered around back was entirely totaled the front of it was pretty much off it had no front bumper no front left quarter panel the hood was destroyed and it was just sitting out there but it was a beautiful example Ferrari Testarossa no issues black with black and tan interior to be race exhaust and nothing wrong with it beforehand now I come back and it was totaled and so I got to talking them about to really feel like figure out what was going on because this fit exactly into what I was looking to do okay I might have a connection that can help me purchase this Ferrari Testarossa he wants it off of his hands it's been sitting here for a long time and obviously it needs to be restored now but what's the story with it why is it still here and why is it now crashed and so it turns out what had happened was that this prominent anesthesiologist in Atlanta had gotten in trouble for tax fraud or tax evasion maybe but he had a extensive collection of cars and like any smart tax evader what he did was put them in other people's names right before got in trouble and so according to this body shop all these random people around Atlanta that knew this guy now had these Ferraris and other high-end cars in their names and so this particularly was his lawn maintenance guy the person who took care of his house and somehow he ended up with the Ferrari Testarossa in his name presumably to give back at whatever point this guy got out of jail or got out of whatever bind he was in but there was one time when according to the body shop he went to get it appraised to try to broker it so he took it to a broker he picked it up from the body shop after a year took it to a broker and on the way back after not selling it crashed the car so after a few miles for the first time in a year he crashed it he had no money to pay to fix it the guy was in jail he was not communicating at all but this guy this lawn maintenance guy wanted to sell it to get it off his hands and he said he had coordinated all with the guy in jail the original owner the true owner he said he coordinated it all now the issue was is very hard to communicate with him after going through the body shop for months and months and months and their incentive was this guy was not paying any storage bills the car was sitting there they weren't fixing it he didn't have the money to fix it he there was not insured insurance would see all the scam going on and not want any involvement and so the dealership or the body shop had all the incentive to try to help us buy it knowing we would restore it and use them for a lot of the work so we had been communicating with the sky for four or five months trying to purchase this car trying to negotiate a price and for some front end work on I think at the time of his maybe testarossa's were going for 95 or 115 perfect condition so a damaged one would probably be a little bit less than that but maybe high 70s or something like that and so he wanted $35,000 for it for just some front-end work and really this seems like a steal this body shop even if we don't do the restoration ourselves is not quoting us a high price at all we can get this done and enjoy this car for a while and ultimately sell it even as Salvage discount so we kept talking to him and we finally got to the point where he was interested in saying okay let's meet up let's give us a check for this let's go farther and till we got an even worse call from the body shop one time that this man unfortunately had a heart attack in the shower and so now nobody owned the car they had no idea what to do with it the guy who owned it he's now dead unfortunately the guy who truly owned it is in jail we can't contact him and this body shop has no idea what to do with this car and said we're sorry we're not gonna sell you this we're not gonna help sell it we're just gonna call an impound lot or someone and tell them to come pick up this car so after months and months and months of seeing this car and then more months of trying to purchase this car and planning on restoring it from someone who was eager to sell it we ended up not being able to buy it and it was a very large disappointment now that continued into understanding a lot of interesting stories with older Ferraris because the one thing you don't want on a Ferrari is any sort of damage any sort of strange history lack of maintenance records anything like that because that is what makes a buyer not want to buy it makes the car impossible to sell and so going off of that last experience I was starting to try sell cars for people primarily what I was doing was I was charging people a listing feet so I would just make a very nice listing take professional photos for them and ultimately just list their car on eBay auto trader websites like that for them and help them sell it rather than going to a dealership now this was no hyper robust business this was just me having a good time and making some money and what I really liked to target to sell were older Ferraris and so I met this guy who the stranger part is I don't know how he found out about me I got a text one day saying I hear you sell Ferraris I have one are you interested in I said of course like yeah what can I do for you and it turns out it was a Ferrari 575 beautiful condition and at the time I think once again they were going for high 90s maybe upwards of a hundred I'm not sure the exact price but of course like any Ferrari owner he wanted exactly what a dealership would sell it to you for if it was in a Ferrari museum he wanted the top-of-the-line market I said okay we went through it we looked took some pictures we made it look very nice we said okay this is this could probably do pretty well this is a well-maintained Ferrari it doesn't appear to have any issues any damage anything like that at the time he provided me a CARFAX report so I wasn't worried at all I looked through it and said okay this clearly been maintained no issues no accidents reported and we listed on a few websites and at one point we got in touch with a mutual friend who was buying Ferraris and selling them to his customer so he was consigning them and he wanted to purchase this Ferrari based on the photos and what we were telling him that I was helping this guy sell once we actually got more and more photos to him got the VIN to him etc we heard back from him saying what are you doing this VIN does not belong to this Ferrari this is a completely different car what are you trying to sell like I'm very confused I thought I had a buyer exactly for this car now I have to tell them that's not it it doesn't exist and I was very taken aback saying okay I've met this guy I've gone through the car like what could be wrong and it turns out I didn't do enough diligence to actually look through the VIN number on the car to make sure it was the one aligned to what we were listing what I was told the documents I was given just to say yeah that's great sure I'll list this and turns out this gentleman had been exactly like I had been he found a salvage Ferrari that needed some repairs thought he could make a huge chunk of cash bought it for maybe twenty or thirty thousand dollars did all the repairs locally in Tennessee and then thought he could contact someone in Atlanta and just get it sold we're a big Ferrari hub is big Ferrari of Atlanta dealership and same issue so started speaking with him and yes it came out this car was completely salvaged before completely repaired and from then on we had to try to negotiate that ok this price is gonna be maybe 20 percent if not more less now that this car has a salvage title and ultimately I realized never try to sell a salvage or damaged Ferrari especially not a market price because it will take months to sell if it sells at all so not the best experience in the engine if you like that story it's time to make one of your own extreme experience puts you in the driver's seat of some of those the best supercar spread over 20 racetracks coast to coast with no speed limits no shipping restrictions and no governance head to the link to choose your supercar find a racetrack near you and start making a story of your own extreme experience it's your turn

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 431,244

Rating: 4.4714637 out of 5

Keywords: Ferrari, Salvage, Rebuilding, Rebuilt, Testarossa, 512, Damage, Accident, VINwiki, Car Stories, Atlanta, Body Shop, Kit Car, 355, Repairs, Exotic Car Buying, Cheap Exotic Cars, Exotic Car Hacks

Id: 4hMhVpr60cE

Length: 12min 12sec (732 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2017