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RE: 1975 Scirocco on Trader Online



I was VERY serious about buying this car. The guy's name is August Arndt,
and he seemed pretty nice, though I wouldn't take what he says at face
value. I'm not saying that no one should buy the car, but I'll warn you that
I definitely wouldn't pay the $1000 he's asking now.

He originally had it for sale at $1500. We tentatively agreed to a price of
$1300, so I FedExed a check to my father from Madison, and he went to see
it.

My father called me while there, and a rather hideous noise was coming from
the background as they were trying to get it to run on all four cylinders.
The car has a LOT of issues.

Without spending too much time in the details, the MAJOR problems are:
1) Engine has problems, especially electrical gremlins. All the hoses were
bad and the radiator was steaming pretty bad. Car was running on 2/3
cylinders, and my father thought it might be as simple as a plug wire, but
not sure. The wiring under the dash was really messy...all hacked together.
The radiator fan was on a manual switch, for example.

2) The body probably needs a lot of work, if it isn't terminal. A weak
magnet test revealed that there may be lots of Bondo under the paint. There
is more rust than apparent from the pictures, too. My father found at least
3 distinct shades of green. Some of the overspray went almost all the way
under the car.

3) The interior isn't as good as it looks in the pictures. He told me that
it was in really good shape. My father mentioned that it looked like the car
had been in direct sun all it's life. Pretty much all the vinyl is shot, and
despite being told that there were no cracks in the dash, there were several
large ones. The horn, radio, and other controls appeared to be in the same
condition as the rest of the wiring.

My father didn't take it for a drive, but August did mention that the front
bearings are bad. I wonder what else is wrong in the rolling gear...

Needless to say, I was VERY disappointed. I could have lived with most of
the issues, but I need a car that has a straight body. Like I said, he seems
like a nice guy, but the car is just not as adveritsed. IMHO, either he
isn't a VW addict like he claims (and therefore didn't know what he had) or
he was deliberately deceptive.

YMMV, of course. He left a message the other day, saying that he was willing
to negotiate more on the price. Considering the TraderOnline price is now at
$1000, it's clear he now knows it isn't worth what he wanted, but I still
don't think it's even worth dealing with...

Neal
'88 16v

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-scirocco-l@scirocco.org
> [mailto:owner-scirocco-l@scirocco.org]On Behalf Of Kenneth Folkman Jr.
> Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 1:58 PM
> To: Scirocco List
> Subject: 1975 Scirocco on Trader Online
>
>
> I was looking through the classifieds and found this:
>
> http://www.collectorcartraderonline.com/addetail.html?470297
>
> The owner emailed the pics to me, and it looks really nice.
>
> Kenneth
> 1980 Scirocco S
> 1991 Corrado
>
>
>
> --
> Email LIST problems to: scirocco-l-probs@scirocco.org. To unsubscibe send
> "unsubscribe scirocco-l" in the message to majordomo@scirocco.org
>



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