Just an example

By Eric

I wanted to talk for a minute about a scenario that we had with a customer a little while ago that will help explain a little about some other aspects of what we do.  The customer in question is a really cool guy I’ve gotten to know a bit through e mail we’re just going to refer to as “Q”  for anonymity’s sake.  Q wanted a specific car that wasn’t  in our current inventory so he did a little searching around on his own and came across the car that he wanted.   Let’s just say that the car was found on one of the general used car for sale sites that can contain dealer cars as well as cars being sold by personal owners.  What he had to base his purchase off of was very minimal like most used car sites, a couple of general exterior shots, and a few notes in Japanese.  Let me show you a basic shot of the extent of ad.

Now let me just say that this is probably one of  the finest 4 door GC10’s I have ever seen (but that’s all a matter preference).  Lets start with a couple of the pics.

See what I mean??!!  This car makes me re-evaluate how I feel about 4 doors.   The most ridiculous set of 10″ and 11″  Watanabe’s I’ve ever seen on a sedan (although let’s admit it could be a bit lower , immaculate paint, an nicely modded L28 , clean interior…..   so far I’m sold.  So we decided to contact the owner and get some more information and pictures before making any irrational decisions.   This is where  it becomes very important to make sure you are well informed about every aspect of a car before purchasing.  Now I don’t want  to come off  like this car is poorly done by any means.  There are a lot of ways to go about restoring a car.  Some people would rather make the exterior look as good as possible, while skimping on the parts you can’t see, and others only want the car restored with all original parts, all metal etc. Even if it’s under the floormats.   What I’m trying to get at here is that however the car was restored, I feel it’s very important that the customer is informed and knows all aspects of the car, not just a couple of pretty exterior shots.  I’m not going to get into everything here, just a couple of areas I find significant.  Let’s first start with the over fenders, if you’ve been keeping up with our blog I described how I feel is the proper way to do them on our Kenmeri here. There  are other ways of doing it as well,  this is another way.

It’s not something I would do but some people may not care, as it is all hidden under the overfender anyways.  But it is still important to know how the car was restored.  Here’s another shot under the door.

Random under chassis shot.

Under the drivers carpet.

Let me just say that I really appreciate the owners honesty in sending all these pictures.  And  this is not to say that none of this is irreparable, or impossible to fix.  But it definitely paints a different picture than if you were to just see the pictures in the original ad, and just goes to show how important it is to have as much information as possible when making a purchase. so you know exactly what you are getting yourself  into.