1976 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser

It was probably an awesome wagon 10 years ago but they just didn't take very good care of it. They told me that it has been sitting for a couple of years. If you ask me it looks more like 10 years.

 

bummer it did look like it had sat for a long time to me in the pics

 

That's a shame.

 

....well this goes back to what I was saying, you cannot get a nice clam for real cheap! it will cost you so much to make them nice and trying to find all the parts! very hard!!

I'm sorry it was not the deal you were hoping for and hope you can recover some of your money back.

a $2000. fixer upper is still a $10000. + car IF you can find the parts to make it nice! it's just how you get there. one all ready to drive , or 2 years worth of work to try and get it there.

everyone should see this and have a new outlook and not be so quick to say, oh that's a $2000. car, or that's not worth that! start looking at what it would cost to get it where it is.

$2000. buy's you junk! or you can say it buy's you a $10,000+ project. what ever make's you feel better?

 

Very well said oldschool!

 

That's one way of looking at it. Another is that AK27 simply overpaid for the car. Remember, he bought it sight-unseen. Maybe if he had gone to look at it first, he might have seen that it wasn't worth $2000. Maybe $500. Maybe $1000 at best. There's a lesson here.

I'm not saying you can get a perfect car for $2000. But you should be able to get something better than a derby car for that kind of money, and you certainly should be able to get a decent clamshell wagon for well less than five figures.

 

AK27 is highly intelligent on clamshells. I gurantee he did not overpay. The shell will be worth $2,000 to a derby driver looking for a good shell. Plus there are guys looking for parts that he can sell.

 

I paid $1400 for this one which I didn't think was to bad. This is definitely a $2000 wagon around here.

 

you can get one for less then 5 figures, but it will need work that will put it over that 10,000 mark or will not have all the power options some would like.

start adding it up, a paint job and body work $3000-5000, interior another $2000-3000 plus the $2000. for the car to start with. bamm $10,000 just like that! that's not tire's, trans or engine work to boot.

if you can find a real nice clam for less, then great for you! but most of the time you get what you pay for!

 

I have to agree with Oldschool here, I purchased my wagon site unseen for $50.00 bucks (my former boss' mother in law) it was running and in decent shape for a 74' that had been in Utah its whole life and driven by a little old lady who used a rock wall next to her driveway to "guide" her onto the street. Bringing this car to what it is now with the receipts to prove it I'm around $9800.00 and I'm still building the interior which I'm estimating will cost me between $2500.00 to $3000.00. That being said you still have to consider the difference between a full blown show car and something just to drive daily. The price of a DD would be somewhat less I suppose but to make it reliable and mechanically sound is still going to be somewhere around $5000.00. Any way you slice it driving these pieces of American History gets expensive, it comes down to passion and the desire to drive your dream wagon.

 

I would rather buy something and do it myself even if it does cost me $10,000 when it is done. UNLESS a car is truly 100% original. I know my quality of work, I know GM's quality of work. I do NOT know the previous owners quality of work

 

Right on man!

 

The way I see it after following these things over the past 12 months, these will sell for $2,000 and less but they usually lean more towards either a derby special or a parts car. You will be very lucky to find something special under or around this figure. So from what I have seen so far, you will need to spend around $4,000 (give or take a little) to get something worth putting money into. $6,000 usually gets you a daily driver with small but liveable issues. $8,000 gets you into something like a $6,000 car but usually a higher end car with more options and less issues. $10,000 is the start of super clean cars with almost zero issues but I have seen some cars mistakenly put into this bracket when they are more like $6-7,000 cars. $12,000 is the start of the high-end clamshells with zero issues and usually most of the fruit, I have seen a couple that I would have paid that for, Mike McCoy's 76 Caprice comes to mind. After that well its originality, mileage and desirability, versus dreamland!

I think at the end of the day you still only get what you pay for (unless you are super lucky)! AK27, you might be disappointed with this clamshell not turning out to be keeper but even I can see from here that at $1,400 you are still not behind the 8 ball.

 

Your analysis on 1970s GM clamshell wagons sounds very reasonable, Mike!!!!!!!!


So glad you found the Caprice Estate wagon that is right for you with a reasonable seller!

 

All of this is irrelevant. We're not talking about what you spend on a car to fix it up once you have it, we're talking about what it's worth. These are two very different things.

One of the greatest truisms in all of car collecting is that you'll spend far more to fix up a car than you'll ever get back when you sell it. Buying a clamshell for $2,000 and spending $10,000 to fix it up does not mean that you now have a $12,000 car. Not at all. The marketplace determines the value of a car, not what is spent on it.


As far as "getting what you pay for," the best way to get the most value for your money is to buy the best-condition car you afford at the time you buy, and let the seller absorb the cost of the fix-up.