Show Me Your Papers!

I’m an older millennial. It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that the cars I’ve loved all my life have become old. Heck, some of them are becoming collectible. This is also an idea that I’ve only just begun to wrap my head around. Though I have no intentions of selling any of them soon, I’ve started to treat my cars as if their provenance/history could be scrutinized in the future. I've seen too many good cars become overshadowed by (un)reasonable doubt to allow it happen to myself.

Online auctions like Bring a Trailer, Cars & Bids, MB Marketplace, and P Car Market are here to stay and a car’s documentation always comes up in the comments. Sometimes I find myself scratching my head at what is and is not a red flag. Cars equipped with 5 digit odometers are almost exclusively sold as “True Mileage Unknown” simply because nobody wants to get sued if the next owner figures out that a car has been driven 150,000 miles instead of 50,000 miles. Meanwhile other, well known questionable milage quicks on cars go unchecked.

Ferrari, infamously, gave dealerships the ability to roll odometers back with the factory’s diagnostic equipment. After a salesperson blew the whistle on Ferrari, Ferrari issued a software update that eliminated the rollback function in the factory diagnostic computer. But the question remains: how many Ferraris for sale right now could have had their odometers back? Countless! Yet I’ve never seen this topic mentioned in the comments section of any Ferrari auction. I’d wager that Bring a Trailer would sell a vintage Ferrari as true mileage unknown simply due to lack of supporting documentation. Conversley, they wouldn’t flinch at a modern Ferarri that bounced in and out of Ferarri showrooms over the course of a few years, despite Ferrari’s documented Ferris Bueller-esqe tendencies in the past.

In a realm a bit closer to my car buying budget, it’s well known that e30 BMW odometers have a tendency to break with time. There are even specialists that rebuild them and offer to reset them to any mileage requested. If an e30’s differential cover is changed, usually to a cover from a Z3 for “upgraded cooling”, commenters rarely flinch at the fact the factory-sealed odometer sensor, mounted in the differential cover, has been compromised. An unscrupulous seller could use either quirk to tamper with the odometer of a car. However, as long as the CarFax shows no discrepancy, the odometer is gospel to buyers.

On the flipside, car folks have a tendency of cherry picking red flags that maybe shouldn’t be. Modern Porsches track how many ignitions an engine has done near and over the engine’s redline. A report can be generated by a Porsche dealer and printed out for an owner. Any Porsche offered with documentation that proves the car hasn't spent "too much time" at or near redline, can fetch a premium. Porsches offered without the report can get a few snide remarks in the comments section, questioning the car’s history. How many trips to the top of a Porsche’s tachometer are too many? Of course you can do some math to calculate how many minutes an engine has been redlined, but that takes extra work few people know how to do. Besides, how long is too long? It sure beats me. A Porsche's "DME Report', as it's called, is a tool in a seller toolbox that must be used properly. If your Porsche is about to hit an online auction block, you need to have a script prepared when the topic comes up or you might lose out!

So here I am with cars that I don’t plan on selling anytime soon, but ones that I would absolutely try to maximize the sell price on them if I decided to sell. I’ve been putting virtually anything related to my BMW’s, aside from gas receipts and insurance policy paperwork, in a three ring binder. These binders live in their respective car's trunk. Since I do most of my own work there aren’t many repair orders, just invoices for parts I’ve bought. Plus any nifty paperwork from any events or shows I attend. I can’t predict what details buyers will be focusing on in the future, hopefully I can answer whatever questions come up. The old addage will always apply…Buy the seller, then buy the car. Hopefully me and my cars are worth top dollar.