I agree. I spoke with the dealership and they made it seem like it was percect inside and out. I am concerned to think the car has been painted but it definately looks like a tape line on the picture of the fender. That is a big ???? When it comes to the authenticity of their story. Definately not worth the asking price. Thanks again for the pictures. It tells a different story.
No problem guys.. glad I could help anyone who was in the market for an "original low mileage car" like that. Personally, with that purported mileage claim..I thought it would be a nicer example as well. Just too much doctoring, too many flaws(leaking trans would be major sticking point for me), and non-originality for that kind of money. Unless he lowers that price substantially for an interested buyer.. it'll be sitting in that little showroom for quite some time to come. I figure when all our typical restomod Mavs and Comets are finally worth 30k.. that one will be right in the ballpark for pricing.
clean car but you can clearly see in a few of the pics were it shows that its been painted sometime. that krooked spedo looks like they turned the miles back , ive seen that before on old cars at krooked used car dealers ive been at in the past.
I always heard about used car salesmen "turning back" speedometers and then the numbers not aligning anymore but I wonder how they were doing it? Some kind of forced turn back of the digits perhaps? I say this because, when I took my speedo gauge apart to clean it, the rolling numbers come right out and can be turned to anything that you want without there being any out of alignment difference. I didn't write my original mileage down before I took mine apart and just remembered it was 47 thousand and some change. I just put it to 47,000 even and it looks good. Now I'm thinking of re-setting all the numbers to 00,000 and starting over.
I've seen many a drill in reverse burnt up rolling the miles back at my uncle's car lot in the seventies lol
I don't think its really that clean of car, that black paint on the bottom looks pretty crappy. Looks like it sat in a damp garage for a long time..
I thank you too for taking the time to get and post these great pictures........... My own take on this, after looking at the pictures, is that the car has rolled over the 100,000 mile mark. Maybe even way back 30 years ago. It was definitely repainted and not as a restoration job. More of a freshening up which was common to do at many low dollar body shops back in the day. Many parts under the hood look original. This could be a sign that the car was well cared for and serviced with genuine Autolite replacement parts. Well cared for would explain the nice interior too. The biggest things that mess up an interior are smoking, eating and drinking. I have seen many cars with "Grandma clean" interiors that had high mileage. As for the tires - remember that those bias ply tires were sold well into the 1980's. If the later '70's is when the car was freshened up with new paint and parts, bias ply tires would have been the normal set to buy for it. JMHO ............. Now, what is the story on that Chrysler next to it. Can't see the grille so I don't know if it is a Newport or the 300 - looks to be a 1961 or 1962 (again, can't see the grille to tell the year for sure) My Dad had a '62 that he put almost 300,000 miles on before the frame turned to dust in salty Wisconsin. Had a 3 on the floor with a 361 in it. One of the cars I learned to drive in!
Did Bias-Ply tires use DOT numbers and Date codes within them to tell when a tire was manufactured. I know they do this NOW, but I'm no Bias-Ply expert...at least not yet...(looking at D70's from Coker). If they did have DOT numbers, the date on the tire would tell you if they were original or not.
Yes, Bias Ply had DOT codes but they were not like todays codes. There were not 2 digits for the year, as the common thought was tires would be used up within a 10 year cycle. So the code you could see was 3 digits for the week and the year - as in 101 - which could be the 10th week of 1971 or 1981 or 1991. In 2000 codes contained 4 digits to include the decade.
While it is true that you could still buy bias plies, in 1980, when I worked at Goodyear, it would have been extraordinarily uncommon to find a numeric-sized bias ply passenger car tire. At that point, almost all of them would be a letter size. The only exception that comes to mind is the funky sized VW tires. The change from numeric to letter sizes transitioned mainly in the early 70s.
Good to know when the changes were taking place from numeric to letter codes. I hadn't thought about that one. Whatever you think about this car, it sure has some interesting features to it. Since you worked with tires back in the day, do you remember when it was common thought to put new tires on regardless of wear and miles, when 5 years had past? I seem to remember that being a common thing. Also, always had to have 2 sets of rear tires here in the north, to have snows on for winter. Without snow tires you were not going anyplace here. When radials came around, that was when the "all season" tires became popular. But it was mostly an advertising gimmick, as you got stuck just as easy with "all season" tires as you did with summer tires. More modern tires and tread design of today do a much better job of being "all season"
The "5 year" rule (actually, I thought it was 7 years) seems to be more a modern thing to me. Tires usually didn't last long enough that this was a problem. If a tire was genuinely old, dry rot is pretty easy to spot. If you look next to the tread in the pics of this car, you can see those tires were done a long time ago.... cracking next to the tread. All season tires .... Goodyear had the Arriva tire in 1980 and that was billed as an all-season. They were good in the rain here. Rather than being blocks, the tread ran out the sides of the tire at an angle, which was innovative at the time. Pretty common now.
Yes AFAIK it's 7 years... Now this is one of my pet peeves, in my opinion this dry rot thing is way over blown, as long as a tire is inside & out of the sunlight they'll last for 20 years or more... Mostly a conspiracy to sell more tires... Yeah the hand wringers will comeback with they aren't safe and in maybe .01% of the time they may be right... Who's to say a new tire doesn't have a defect and blows out in a few hundred miles, when the replaced tire would have still been rolling down the highway??? Minor weather cracks(now called dry rot), don't worry me in the least and unless a tire has noticeable cracking, is cut or or has some other defect, I'll run them till the tread is close to not passing inspection... Now back on topic, would I trust the tires on that Maverick??? Nope even I'm not that brave...
I agree 100%. It's a myth that is used to sell more tires. You can see dry-rot if it has occurred. I have a set of tires in the garage that are 11 years-old and have never been on the road. There is no dry-rot whatsoever, and they are as safe as any tire.
