Car Sales

Sport and Classic Car Company

and

Billions of Car Parts Company

10525 Airline Drive Houston, Texas 77037

Something Wicked This Way Drives

We have several more titles for this section. We just can't decide so here they all are.

Cars for Sale- (truly unique)

Fine and less fine Vintage Automobiles for sale (more interesting but not quite there)

Pre- owned cars for sale (typical euphemism and as interesting as a used oil filter)

Cars in a Coma for sale ( hmmmmm)

SLC's (Sporting and Luxury Cars) seeking FLO's (Fun Loving Owners)

Rolls-Royce cars use a considerable number of nuts and bolts and we like lots of words. Below is another contender for best title:

Four wheeled automotive works of art are available for a change of stewardship in various conditions ranging from utterly distressed yet ready for a whole lotta love to very spiffy.

If you read past our cars for sale listings you will find a lot of commentary about how to go about buying a car and evaluating it before or after purchase.

The Future of Cars

In 2013 we will be selling a collection of cars such as:

1966 Austin Healey 3000- runs and drives, overdrive, wire wheels, very nice car, silver blue

1967 Austin Healey 3000 runs and drives, overdrive, wire wheels, a very nice car, silver blue

1958 Austin Healey 100/6 BN7 two seater, wire wheels, overdrive no rust, a nice car-silver blue

1959 Austin Healey 100/6 BN7 two seater- no rust, overdrive, in storage many years- dark blue

1962 Jaguar E-Type roadster- four speed, not running, a good solid early car that requires complete restoration.

1971 Jaguar E-Type roadster- four speed runs and drives, a very nice car-red with black leather

1974 Jaguar E-Type roadster- four speed runs and drives, 34K miles, a good solid E-Type- primrose yellow with black leather

1961 Jaguar Mark II 3.8 automatic LHD burgandy with chrome wire wheels, fog lamps, black leather cockpit-burgundy with black leather

1960 Jaguar Mark II- 3.8 automatic, LHD burgundy with burgundy leather-restored 25 years ago and needs it again.

1948 Morgan Flat Rad - BRG and RHD-beautiful condition

1976 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow-white with creme cockpit, sunroof-very nice, can use new paint

1974 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow-silver blue with blue leather- solid car with a bad engine.

1955 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud LHD-silver blue- a fantastic car

1960 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud RHD-white- a very nice car

1966 MGB-GT-red- a restorable heap-complete

1971 Mercedes Benz 300sel-black with black leather- a fine car.

1987 Maserati Spyder convertible-red, five speed. - very good mechanicals, needs red paint and a top

1966 Bristol 409- white with gray leather- a great car.

If you have a serious interest in any of the above cars, send us a e-mail note, no phone calls please, pictures are not available at this time and we will contact you when that car is available. No pricing at this time.

A rising tide sinks all cars

A fellow dropped by one day and asked for advice about buying a Rolls Royce. We told him to buy the best car that he could afford and stay away from “on line auction bargains”. He had around $25K to spend. Instead of following our advice, he did the exact opposite and bought four dilapidated late 1980's Rolls Royce and Bentley cars for around $5000.00 each. One of them, a 1988 Bentley Mulsanne was purchased in Florida. The story we were told was gradually revealed over time by the car and the owner. The short version was that the car had been left on a beach until the tide came in and salt water inundated the car chassis . The engine had salt water in the cylinders and in the exhaust system. The car was towed to a local Florida shop to fix. They flushed the motor and removed the salt water from the engine by stupidly loosening the cylinder head bolts until the water ran out. They supposedly made it run. The engine had a resulting coolant leak from one of the head gaskets. The new owner described himself as a "master mechanic" and bought the car with full knowledge of the salty encounter and the head gasket problem. He had the car shipped to Houston. On the way the car was vandalized and parts were stolen from the engine compartment such as the emission air pump, various hoses and valves and cooling system parts. Crude attempts were made to steal other parts resulting in damaged and bent parts. The car was then transported to us to repair the head gaskets. As we examined the car while doing the head work, we found that the car was extensively rusted and the rear springs were in danger of breaking loose as the retainers in the rear trailing arms were very corroded. The front shocks were so badly worn they had ground egg shaped holes in the upper spring plates. The body panels were growing rust and all the under chassis parts were badly rusted. The metal fuel lines were so rusted that they leaked fuel under pressure. The fuel filter was corroded and seized solid to the metal fuel lines. We discovered that at some point in the past, the catalytic converter had gotten very hot and had melted the insulation off the wires in a wiring bundle located inside the car.

The story goes on and on so the lesson to be learned is what?

1. Don't buy a car that a rising tide found its way into.

2. Don't buy bargain cars unless they are extensively and expertly checked out unless you plan to invest a great deal of money into the car with unknown results. There are good deals around but paying $5000.00 for a car that would normally will sell for many times that amount if in good condition is highly risky. There is an old saying that an honest man can't be conned but this is not true. Many cars for many decades have been expertly detailed to look good for a cursory examination or photo shoot by clever crooks. Faking something up to have an enticing salable appearance to those that won't or don't do proper research has been going on for many thousands of years. It's just the way it is.

3. Never loosen cylinder head bolts to release tidal waters.

4. Anything and everything on any car can break, fail or fall off at any moment no matter how new the car is. New cars have many more parts than vintage cars.

Les Miserables

This 1967 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow was being sold ( as a car) by a junk yard. Probably not the best place to buy a Rolls-Royce from?

Glowingly described as a "beautiful car". By happenstance we had examined this particular car a few years previously and determined that the poor thing was a very sad and rusted out heap of junk with a Rolls Royce grill hanging on to rusty metal. We told the owner not to waste money trying to fix the car as no good end could be had. The car did not rate as a good parts car as it was a disintegrating mess and the owner took the car away and sold it to a local car dealer junkyard sort of place. Click the photo to expand it, examine the background and you see junk cars sitting around. They were asking $12,000 for what was long ago a great car. We can say no more.

Jaguar

Jaguar projects:

How about a scarce 1989 Jaguar XJS-C Cabriolet? Not running and ready for beautification.

We have a 1975 MGB and a 1966 MGB-GT for sale. Good project cars.

1992 Mercedes Benz 300TE station wagon for parts or to repair. The front end metal is clean and the car was running and driving but the engine overheated and the head gasket is blown. Nice electric seats, clean interior, good working radio, good brakes, good fuel injection. tight suspension, Cold and working a/c, working power steering, the power seats and windows work, Euro headlamps, good exhaust, The tires are about new and have less than 100 miles on them. Two new fuel pumps were recently installed. A Hummer backed into the left rear door after these photos were taken. Stupid Hummer.

Thanks to all for the offers for various parts. However, we would prefer and are are willing to sell the car complete with a clean Texas title as the car is solid and worthy of repairing. If your car is trashed and you have a good engine, drop it into this car and away you go. If the car does not sell soon, we will part it out. $1200.00 complete.

All the money from this car sale goes to Husky Haven, an animal rescue group that saves Siberian Husky dogs. They are near Spring Texas and help a lot of great dogs find homes.

"We can't take anything with us when we leave this world but cars sure are a lot of fun while hanging around here.."

attributed to S. MacClymondsvitz XXXXI while talking with a funeral director.

Rules of the game.

If an enthusiast has a serious interest in a car we have available, please call or Email for detailed information. We are not a car museum although we may look like one at times as we are fortunate to have a continuous back log of interesting and complex work booked into the shop for owners eager to have their cars returned as soon as possible. Selling cars is not our main line of business. Repairing and restoring cars is where our main interests stay focused.

After all, it's far safer to buy a car from a knowledgeable business like ours with a long and impeccable reputation than from the great unknown auction world where what you see in a photo is what you may or may well not get. Thus we appreciate serious queries about cars we offer for sale. If a car is not of a color of one's liking or perhaps the year model is not the one sought or the car is not desired for any reason discernable by photograph or description, why waste time on it? We all save time for better pursuits and life is too short to waste. We are happy to e-mail photos to allow inspection of photographic condition and are able to give detailed descriptions of known condition or history. All questions can be answered readily by phone or Email. If a car maintains interest, we can set up an appointment for personal inspection. If you are a car broker looking for a quick buck, don't call us. Thanks a lot, we really appreciate it.

We have more detailed photos of these cars and can Email them to interested buyers.

The Biggest Loser or how not to buy a car

For those of you that enjoy reading our meandering narratives and a little bit of pontificating about cars and money, read on as these cars symbolize both a continuing series of technological innovations and un art de vivre meaning they are great fun to drive.

Certain cars are genuine fun machines and are more enjoyable than watching stock prices go down unless you are into that sort of thing and this is ok! Car values are determined by traditional market supply and demand not by the futures market, derivatives, hedge funds or complicated financial schemes purposely designed so that few can understand them. Nothing is difficult about understanding why a certain car gives you a thrill whenever you see or drive it. Desirable cars seldom or never drop in value overnight like stocks can and do. The value of a car does not depend on the futures market as the future is murky. So, buy a car from us and enhance your net worth!

"Ultra automotive sophistication can rob the joys of simple and primitive pleasures that can be most enjoyable ." says Scotty while rebuilding a V12 Jaguar engine.

Great styling is something many late model cars lack as a beautiful shape does not necessarily have a good drag co-efficient. Italian car designers in the days when pen and pencil were used to design things always tried to make their cars look like beautiful women. This concept does take a bit of imagination and a few glasses of wine to appreciate but the long gentle curves of an early Ferrari or Alfa Romeo don't look like a Bentley. Women were probably not designed in a wind tunnel yet manage to look fabulous despite not being designed by a CAD/CAM program and a wind tunnel.

All modern cars are designed with careful attention to drag co-efficient using wind tunnels and CAD/CAM design. This is a good thing as modern cars are aerodynamically efficient yet as a result many modern cars look much alike. To some people cars are like a lawnmower or toaster and they could care less what they drive as long as it is cheap to run. This is not a bad thing but these people would not be interested in reading this website. Boring cars get you around but so could a well designed wheel barrow. If the grille badges from a 2012 Mercedes Benz and a 2013 Lexus were swapped would anyone really notice?

Would anyone mistake this great Mercedes Benz for anything else? The car is not particularly aerodynamic but it is without a doubt a big black Merc.

Don't Ask and Don't Tell the Duck

It's always wise to ask a lot of questions about purchasing a car or anything expensive. Few sellers are going to tell you anything unfavorable about their wares unless you ask them direct questions and this is the way of the world. It is best to do some homework and know something about what to ask about so you don't resemble a duck waiting to be plucked. Our website is full of photos and stories that provides some things to look for or to look out for.

Dark Shadows

Here are photos of a 1961 Austin Healey Sprite that was purchased from a shop that amazingly enough specializes in restoring Sprites. The car looked great on the outside but what was underneath...

In this photo you can see several fingers poking through the floor. This hole was not a factory option. Soon after the owner bought the car, he asked us to replace the entire interior and after we removed the carpets we found a hand made piece of plywood covering the entire drivers side floor and the non standard rust hole.

In the above three photos you can see a front suspension that has not been worked on by a professional in many decades. It is always the mechanicals that are frequently ignored and such cars are frequently sold as "restored" using on line auctions. So, the lesson here is always to have a look at what you are purchasing. Unscrupulous car sellers know that many buyers are unknowledgeable about cars and many buyers base decisions on superficial appearances like a paint job or some chemical shine on the tires. So the seller polishes the apple and leaves the rotten core for someone else to bite into. Rotten apples should not sell for as much as a nice ripe apple but they do all too often.

Beats a heart that does not soar when driving a vintage Jaguar, a classic Rolls-Royce, an always beautiful Austin Healey 3000, a mysterious Bristol, a cool MGA, a handsome Bentley or a ferocious Mercedes Benz 300sel we wistfully enquire?

If not then it's a cold heart and needs some warming up. A good way to do that is to buy a car such as those that we offer even though we do not have many left to sell! Exhilarating experiences other than brute speed have been designed out of many late model cars despite their hugely powerful engines. Thanks to a catalyzing book written by Ralph Nader in the 1960's called "Unsafe at any Speed", modern cars are safer than vintage cars and for most drivers today this is a very good thing as essentially most people worldwide drive with the attitude that anyone in front of them is a really lousy driver and those behind are no longer of concern.

Perhaps this is so because humans evolved to walk and run and swim a little. Driving cars and airplanes was probably not a part of the original human design plan. Sporting cars were designed to be driven by those that enjoy driving cars that look great, handle well and have a exhaust note that gets a person down right excited just to be in the car. There is much more to a fine car than brute horsepower and modern cars are better than vintage cars in many ways yet are also not much fun in many ways as being totally safe is rather boring isn't it? We all need a bit of sporting now and then to ruffle our feathers and make living ever interesting.

A great car can do this.

For example, the engines in vintage sporting cars were designed to be admired for their mechanical beauty and exhaust systems were designed to have a delightful throaty note. The Italians designed cars that were inspired by beautiful women. The Italians also made the best sounding exhaust systems and espresso machines and there is nothing better sounding than a snarling E-Type or a roaring Austin Healey 3000 with an ANSA exhaust. Beethoven would have loved these cars!

Many engines like 1950-1968 Jaguar motors were beautiful Machine Age designs with highly polished aluminum cylinder heads and cam covers adorned with chromed acorn nuts and two or three carburetors and are quite unlike most modern cars that feature boring looking engines buried beneath plastic covers so the engine looks like a big ugly plastic battery. Many car manufacturer designers are not the brightest of lights or are they really giving us what we want in a car these days? Do we really want ugly engines?

Modern cars are filled with expensive electronic modules that control just about everything as the makers surely must think that people have become too stupid to pull a knob or be able to park the car themselves. As a car gets on in years the cost of some of these components stay absurdly expensive yet the self serving managements of many car manufacturing companies keep making modern cars ever more complex with increasing layers of complicated electronic parts that prevent cars from being affordably fixable when the cars have depreciated for a few years. That is the master plan.

On the other hand.

The fine vintage cars we deal with were made from steel, leather, chrome, Ambla, fine wood and Rexine that were styled to be seen. Early car models were made using the eyes and hands of artistic human beings that knew how to design a car that would make a persons head spin around. Jaguar Cars founder and designer, the brilliant Lord William Lyons, had his cars designed using full size clay mockups. He directed his engineers to build these mockups on his home driveway so he could think about the designs while he had his morning tea and crumpets. When he looked out the window and the car was beautiful from every angle, that was the design. Thus the cars we like to own have humanistic charms and flaws that make them ever more endearing to the soul. We honor the spirit of great automotive design with our restoration work.

"For what is the meaning of this moment without considering and savoring the beauty of that which once was?" says Scotty while considering and savoring the beauty of that which once was every day of the week.

Have a look at some cars we have available and keep in mind that we offer a full and comprehensive pre-purchase inspection service if your car quest is not to be found on our steadily shrinking list of automotive offerings. Many cars have been sold so the list is growing ever smaller.

Buying cars using on line auctions:

Caveat Emptor!

Cars are brought to us on a regular basis that were acquired almost sight unseen (other than by little digital photos like what are on our website) via a popular on line auction that has four letters. There are many claims made by car sellers on the internet claiming this and that and a lot or a little truth may be there. We know this to be true because many new owners ship some of these cars to us for extensive and unplanned work. They tell us the sales description and the reality is frequently just not so. Everyone selling with on line auctions are not crooks and we certainly are not proclaiming this but....

Burning Pants

Be especially cautious of on line auction car sellers proclaiming their car to be:

1. "perfect" (No machine built by humans is perfect. The adjective "perfect" should not be used to describe a car.)

2. "The best there is." (The best what there is? How could this seller honestly state that their car is best there is without seeing the rest of the "best there is" cars in this series and knowing what to look for?)

3. "1982 Rolls-Royce, brand new" (How can anything that was sold much less a car that was built in 1982, be brand new?)

4. "totally restored" These cars are usually offered with no detailed documentation of any restoration work that was supposedly undertaken. Generally the price is a fraction of the parts cost alone that is required for a proper job much less the labor involved in restoring a car. Lots of times the car is being sold by a car lot claiming to be a "specialist". The phrase "frame off restoration" may be claimed but such cars are usually offered without supporting photos, invoices or anything other than words. Lots of times we have seen this claim made for cars that do not have a frame. Anyone offering a car that had a frame off restoration should absolutely have lots of visual proof that details the work and parts that went into the project.

5. "recent major restoration does not come any better" ( see #4)

6. "a great investment" (for who?)

7. "The car is a 10 out of 10." Anyone making this claim is highly likely not to have a clue about cars as very very few cars in the world can honestly be ranked as such and these cars are rarely offered via on-line auctions.

8. We have seen some car dealers anoint themselves with names that imply that they are car museums or have grandiose sounding names when in fact they are just buying and selling cars.

9. The following advertisement was cut and pasted word for word from an actual advertisement to sell a 1960 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud.

"Hard to find original unmolesder car. This vehicle appears to have never been smoked in. The wonderful condition of this vehicle leads us to believe it has been garage kept. Bid with confidence this vehicle is being offered with a Limited Warranty. All vehicles are sold as-is and without warranty. Seller makes no representations or statements as to the fitness for purpose or condition either implied or expressed."

Hmmm, "appears" and "leads us to believe" sure leaves a lot of wiggle room. There is a limited warranty of some sort offered but the car is being sold as -is without warranty. The purpose of a car is to drive it but they make no representation that this basic function can be done.

A great many more people smoked tobacco in past times than today so the odds of any car having never been smoked in is possible but the odds are against it. Very confusing eh?

10. There are lots of car ads wherein most of the verbiage is devoted to proclaiming the seller to be a world renowned expert, a well regarded car collector, a swell of a fellow/business by any description, a veritable paragon of virtue whose only charitable interest is sell a car.

Here are photos of a 1958 Silver Cloud with a rotten under chassis or frame. The car was purchased using a well known on-line auction from a Florida car dealer-junkyard for around $32,000. If you look carefully, you can see that at some point in the past, someone welded some thin metal on top of rotten heavily rusted metal. This sort of thing does nothing but mask the rust problem. This metal is also rusting away and this entire frame area is rotten. The front fenders depend on these parts for support and these fenders were moving up and down with the bumps on the road. The car was advertised by the Florida car dealer/junkyard as being "totally restored". The buyer did not have the car examined by a professional prior to buying it. He did travel to Florida to look at the car but could not test drive it because the steering wheel had been removed for "polishing". He bought the car anyway and his troubles began.

When this car was delivered, it had no brakes at all, the engine barely ran and the transporter almost wrecked it taking the car off the delivery truck. The paint work was very old and appeared to have been sprayed by a drunk painter on LSD in a dust storm. The chrome or what was left of it had been sanded with heavy grit. The shine was gone and all the trim was in dreadful condition. The new owner could not find anyone locally to repair the brakes so he shipped the car to us. We examined the poor car and found the brake cylinders to be rusted solid thus the car had no working rear hydraulic brakes. The front brakes were in just about as bad condition. Of course for $32K, the car had never been restored, had not been rebuilt nor had it any decent care in several decades as far as we could tell and we could tell a great deal. Look again at the photos of intense rust in the frame areas. We call this car totally rustored.

Once we heard the too familiar and sad story on the car, we suggested to the owner that he return the car to the seller and get his money back as $32,000 was way too much to spend on a rusted out junk heap that was a poor parts car at best. Well, the seller refused to give the money back yet also claimed he could rebuild all the brakes on the car in just two hours. As the brake pipes were rusty and all the cylinders were bad with no telling what else, we told the owner to take up this offer as at this point as he had nothing left to lose except perhaps his life due to brake failure. So he had the car shipped back to Florida. All these shipping costs were paid by the new owner. It was a bad deal for everyone but the seller I suppose. For the seller, it was a "good investment".

On line car purchasing is a buying method fraught with peril as most any car can be tarted up to look good in a series of digital photos. What you see may not be at all what you can get and many people sell cars via on line auctions because they do not want to sell these cars in their local areas because they don't want to be sued or assassinated. This is so because the cars may be in a pitiful rusted condition. Photos can show what the photographer wants to show or what they don't want to show. Ever heard of Photo Shop? This is not to say that ALL cars bought via on line auctions are Trojan horses waiting to pounce on your wallet but some certainly are. Avoid purchasing any car that is advertised as "totally restored" or " buy from the best" as 99.9% of the time this is not true. We strongly suggest that any major automobile purchase should be inspected by a knowledgeable person before purchase. In other words, don't be stupid. ( How dare he say that!) Instead, be smart!

If you had a moment of adrenalin fueled rashness and bought a car that was advertised as "totally restored" for an all too cheap price and it turned out to be the rusty heap of junk that it should have been advertised as being, now you have to deal with the consequences of making a rash decision. We all do such things but why not be sensible?

A before purchase examination by a pro is simply sensible. Otherwise such purchases can be like playing craps with someone else's loaded dice. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose depending how the people holding the dice feel about it. We prefer our clients to purchase good cars so we do offer a most comprehensive inspection program for automobile purchases and many shops around the country do this service as well. NEVER go by an inspection the seller or a friend of the seller provides as there is a genuine conflict of interest. If a professional inspection is not possible, be sure to ask LOTS of questions keeping in mind that words and phrases like "restored", "rebuilt", "everything is new" or "perfect", have vastly different meanings to people. If you have to have a perfect vintage car, you will never be happy as nothing made by humans is perfect especially a vintage anything.

11. Frame off restoration. We have seen this claim made many times about cars that don't have a frame as the car is a unibody design such as a Silver Shadow.

A bad B

Recently a 1977 MGB was sent to us for minor repairs. The car was purchased using an on line auction from a car lot in Iowa for $9000. The car was supposed to be in excellent condition. Here is a brief description of some of what we found wrong with the car:

The brake servo was found to be missing internal parts and was inoperative. The brake servo hose was leaking. The rear brake fluid pipes were crushed flat and allowed no brake fluid to reach the rear wheel cylinders. The rear wheel cylinders were rusted solid and the brake shoes were soaked in axle oil. The differential had almost no lubricant. The fuel pump had been replaced and the new pump was found bolted to the rear sway bar causing it to float up and down with the suspension and this situation caused the fuel hoses to crimp and uncrimp, crimp and uncrimp. It was a crimp'in mess.

The front brake calipers were rust seized, the front brake hoses were rotten and torn and the front brake rotors were very rusted. The brake caliper bendover tabs were missing. The clutch slave cylinder and master cylinder were bad and a non standard clutch hose had been installed creating a very strenuous clutch action. The Weber carburetor was actually installed backwards and the linkage and cables were in a bind. The carburetor was trashed internally from very long term storage with old gas and required replacement. The water pump had been replaced but the part used was for an earlier model MGB and incorrect. This placed the fan belt at an improper angle. The harmonic balancer/pulley had been forced rearwards with a pry bar until the rubber bonding broke and the metal snapped on the balancer/pulley. A too short fan belt had been forced on. The coolant was ancient and full of contamination from the disintegrating radiator and cylinder block cooling galley rust. The transmission mounts were sagging and rotten. The original temperature gauge had been removed and a cheap replacement installed. The rear sway bar bushings were rotten and worn out and the rear sway bar was loose. The exhaust system was rotten and broken, the exhaust mounts were broken. The passenger window would not roll up or down without breaking the handle. The thermostat housing was cracked, the clock was DOA and the inside lamp was found held together with electrical tape and stuffed into place so it looked like a lamp. We fixed all the above as the new owner wanted to get the car into decent driving condition and the bill was substantial.

Magic Paint is a wonderful thing.

There are folks that believe that painting something with a spray can is restoring or rebuilding it. These are not people that you want to buy a car from. Some car sellers claim their car has been "totally restored" for much less than what the parts to do so would cost! Don't buy a car from these people either.

Of course a buyer may choose to be like the Captain of the Titanic was. .

"Hey Captain, this weather bulletin says there are lots of icebergs out there!" Says the soon to be drowned Marconi radio operator.

" The sea looks good to me so full speed ahead while I take a nap. Don't bother me unless you hit something really big", says the smiling but soon to be embarrassed and drowned Captain.

So, buy a great car that makes you happy but have it checked out first.

Here are some cars that have passed through our hands and found new owners.

1935 Rolls-Royce 20/25 with Barker coach work. Thanks Sold!