Most profitable car flip was the worst car I have owned

and as we might say he was a shrewd negotiator and so going up I was always fascinated by Ruth I love the philosophy of their cars of taking a brilliant car in the Porsche 911 and then just making it kind of to a moon and back modifying it to be so fast we've all seen the videos of the Yellowbird tearing around the Nurburgring and most of us played Gran Turismo and saw that instead of Porsche we had roof which we didn't know much about but it was this fascinating brand that were really really fast and stood up against all the hyper cars of really any era they were up against and I just was enamored with the idea of the cars it actually seemed like a great car for cannonball you know it was lightweight aerodynamic prioritised top speed was generally fuel-efficient it had everything going for it but you never saw them but back in 2012 I'd organised a trip from Lamborghini Atlanta with some Lamborghini owners down to the experience which is sort of Lamborghinis customer-facing track driving experience program and we were driving from Atlanta to Palm Beach to go to PGI AR and drive the Aventadors and Superleggera and everything else on the track and on the way down one of my guys in a perform on tey had had a tire pressure monitor break internally and it was rattling around in the barrel of his wheel and so we stopped at Lamborghini Palm Beach and asked them to dismount the tire and fix it and they were happy to do so but while we were wandering around there there was a car in their service bay and it was a roof and I asked the general manager I was like you know what's the deal with this car y'all selling it servicing he said I don't even want to talk about it I hate that car were involved in this terrible lawsuit with the owner and it's just getting really really nasty I'd like it never to be here again but it's gonna be here for quite some time and I went on to find out that the previous general manager had taken the car in on consignment when the guy ordered an Aventador and the waiver Aventadors at that point was a year and a half two years and so he had a car coming in late in 2012 they were gonna consign the car at like a hundred and 99 grand and see if it's sold but if it didn't he had promised him a trade allowance of a hundred and thirty thousand against his Aventador the new general manager had come in without much familiarity about what roof was and he saw that number and said absolutely not I'm not gonna put that much money in this car I've got hottest car on earth in this Aventador and I've got this thing that I don't know I don't like and we've been trying to sell for a year and a half and nobody seems to want and so he had told the guy look I'm gonna sell your car to somebody else and you can keep your roof or whatever but I'm not giving you that he had decided he thought it was worth 75 grand at the time that was probably water no seven 911 turbo would have bought and he kind of viewed it in that light it was a 2006 r/t 12 that had been brought into the US and then taken back to the factory in Germany in 2009 to have the RT 12s updates which took it from 650 to 685 horsepower but in reality I think they all pretty much always made 730 or at least that's what I was told and so he didn't really know what the car was he just knew he didn't want it and the owner was obviously offended at this offer and so the lawsuit continued and it went on for a couple of years and I would occasionally check back in and say you know how's my roof doing because I had told him you know look I see you don't want the car if you get it traded if you ever own it just call me and I'll buy it from you I had no idea if he'd ever get anywhere near his price but I thought anything close is a great deal and it's a car I'd like to own I've always kind of wanted a 911 but I wanted something a little bit more special and this seemed like the perfect opportunity and it was kind of a weird spec it was matte black with a cocoa brown interior and that was a popular color when the 996 came out in terms of the interior and what it actually happened was the car was GT silver originally and he'd have it wrapped matte black when it came into the u.s. but then when you'd sent it back for the updates he hadn't repaint it so it was like another 50,000 euros for the updates and the paint to me there's kind of a quintessential spec you can customize it in any way you want but I wanted a narrow body car that was rear-wheel drive stick had their integrated roll cage and all the aerodynamics and everything and so this car even though it's kind of a quirky combo and certainly it had a tough life for the last couple years sitting outside in South Florida I just thought it was fantastic had the adjustable Moton suspension and on paper it was just perfection but as the years went on I got worried and I figured I was never gonna be able to buy it and then a general manager that I knew well got moved to a different dealership and I didn't know the new guy and at that same time they had settled the lawsuit in a way that he didn't know about he wasn't sure and so the card left I was kind of upset about that and I had left Lamborghini Atlanta back in November of 2015 do just take some time off of my family and look for something else to do I didn't have anything particular in mind eventually we ended up starting VIN Wicky but I was kind of just sitting around through the holidays and around Christmas in 2015 I was browsing around Craigslist and I saw a 2006 roof advertised on Craigslist and upstate New York Emily it's an O six matte black roof and the mileage was consistent with what I thought it had and there wasn't an asking price but it was a phone number so I called the guy and I said do you actually have the car and he said no I don't know I'm friends with the owner and he wants me to find him a real number for it and you know he's it's in Florida but he's kind of nervous about things and I said well this is what I know about it and I gave him the whole rundown of the cars history for the last few years and he was dumbfounded that anyone would have this amount of knowledge about the car or that car in particular and so we went back and forth a little bit and I said look the car's got enough of a stigma because it's set outside and so many people have seen it why don't you just take the ad down and you and I'll work something out and I promise you I'm a Czech rider I'll be an easy deal I know that the Lamborghini dealership wanted to offer him about 75 grand for the car I also know it's gonna need a lot because it's been sitting since they made in that offer and so why don't we just you and I talk a little bit more about it but just take this Atlanta this listing down because I didn't want anybody else to call about it and well and we'll figure something out and as we might say he was a shrewd negotiator and so we went back and forth and I offered him 69 thousand dollars and he wanted a $1,500 Commission for managing the deal or whatever and I was obviously happy to pay that and as much as he tried to get me to come up I just stuck there and ended up owning the car for seventy thousand five hundred with his Commission the owner wanted to run the deal through Lamborghini Miami because he wanted to kind of stay out of it I was scared because I knew Brett David well he's a consummate car enthusiast and I figured you know when he sees this car come in through his inventory he's gonna notice that it's dirt cheap and he's gonna try to buy it out from under me and like what am I gonna do but I didn't really have an option and so I said alright well we'll just do that and I flew down there with a certified check and showed up to buy the car and I get there and they're kind of hiding it from me I'm like where's the roof and it was in the back they had multiple battery charges on it it wouldn't start that would check engine lights were all on it was just a mess but I said it's alright it's okay I'll get it figured out let's just put a new battery in it and I'll try to drive it home my brother had actually flown in and we were both gonna drive the car to Atlanta the next day so we had an awesome road trip home it was it was a little bit problematic because the you know the car was acting up a little bit it really hadn't been driven at that point I think about three or four years and so the wheels were leaking because the seals had dried out in the three-piece o.z wheels and roof used the seats out of the ferrari enzo in the car and they didn't really fit the cockpit as Porsche had designed and so your knees were a little bit too upright and they weren't terribly adjustable it was very hard to drive it without your hands hitting your knees but we made it home and the car was supposed to make 730 horsepower and go 228 miles an hour but I think on the Turnpike I was only able to get it about 182 or 85 so I was a little bit disappointed and I figured it was a little bit down on power but I had no idea so I got at home and started going through fix the wheels fixed some paint things and went through a few things on the car and ended up getting some standard Carrera seats that just fit the car a lot better and or at least were a lot more comfortable but I could not get the car to pass our Georgia obd2 emissions scan so I ended up getting in touch with the former mechanic of the only roof dealership in the US for the last 15 years that was in Dallas and he said to make sure they're using the right obd2 port I said well we're using an obd2 port and I don't think it's legal to have to but he said nope nope there's absolutely a second one you pull this trim panel off on the passenger side and plug right into it and I guess one runs the 996 motor and one runs the 997 body so that RT twelves were a little bit peculiar because I didn't like the variable vane turbos for a while that were on the nine nine seven and so they kind of kept working with the cars but eventually I got it back to the emissions place with the proper obd2 port and it would not pass for secondary evap or a catalytic converter so I called the factory and they said well you got to send the ECU's back and we'll send him over to Bosch and they'll program it this was right around the time of Volkswagen diesel gates so I knew Bosch was up to the task and but the car was down for like two months when I sent it off but finally got it back got it registered everything was good but I just never fell in love with the car it wasn't that comfortable it definitely wasn't stable and there were probably some issues I think one of the shocks was starting to go but it used this really complex Moton system with some kind of front-end lift and it definitely was not making that kind of power I think it probably made 600 on its best day and I was terrified to actually know what was wrong with it because there was nothing going to be cheap about trying to fix this car that was like I think it was two hundred and sixty thousand euros new and then fifty thousand for the update so somebody had over 400 grand invested in this car at some point and so I finally just got to the point in fact I after I had bought the gray Murcielago and gotten rid of the green one it was down for a couple of months as we were doing some cosmetic things and reconditioning it because it had lived kind of a tough life before I got it and I ended up trying to trade the roof for another murciélago and it's one of those times where you sort of look at a mirror and you go Edie why are you like this and it's just you know it just wasn't really the car for me it made all the sense in the world it couldn't seem better on paper but in practicality I just never fell in love with the thing so I I drove it a few thousand miles and had some fun and ended up talking to another dealer that had some experience selling some roof cars and I sold it to him for a hundred and fifty four grand so did a little better than doubling my money on it and a little over a year I guess I had that car but really enjoyed it and for what it was and the experience of owning it I think there were three RT 12s is in the US and they still are as far as I know and it was cool to use then Wiki to track the other ones and figure out where they were popping up because this was a true w09 VIN car where Porsches were generally wp0 and so you can either send your Porsche to roof to modify and they'll keep the VIN or they'll build their own as they have om manufacturer status and they'll assign their own VIN so this was one of those and it was very very special people would come up at car shows like it's not an are you for a ruff for whatever but it is roof and I had a blast you know kind of learning more about the cars but have certainly not missed it I had my fun I made my money and send it on down the road but sometimes you just never know until you meet your heroes what they're actually going to be like

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 1,266,904

Rating: 4.8969955 out of 5

Keywords: Ruf, Ruf Automobile, RT12, RT12S, 911, 997, Narrow Body, Twin Turbo, 200 mph, Supercar, Yellowbird, Nurburgring, Flat 6, German, Ed Bolian, Lamborghini Murcielago, Car Flipping, Project Car, Hobby, Flip, Profit, Manual Transmission, 6 Speed, VINwiki, Car Stories, Top Gear, CTR, Rare, Collector Car, Matte Black, Carbon Fiber

Id: l5b7GECeJuE

Length: 11min 24sec (684 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 29 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/RashestHippo]

Thanks for sharing this one, I was very curious after the brief story you shared with thatdudeinblue last year.

/r/VINwiki if anyone wants to share their car story.

[u/barney420]

So bought a car with shady history and never got it checked properly. Wew lad.

[u/Komcor]

Love your stories Ed. Will you be coming to C&C Charlotte any time soon?

[u/directrix688]

This guy could read the back of a shampoo bottle and I'd watch that video.

[u/balfan123]

Ed is a great story teller. Keep em coming.

[u/Novicept]

Honestly, I just love how well spoken that guy is.

[u/Riasisgod]

Thank you for putting together all these car stories, they always make my day a little better. They also give me a bit of hope for a less bleak future.

[u/AWildAnonHasAppeared]

Hey Ed where did you learn your negotiating skills?

[u/cherishV]

I like this guy, stories interesting.