I've talked about this before, but after recently corresponding with a member who dealt with this company, I thought it was time to refresh this subject. As a side note, I have bought a few cars sight unseen from across the country and have always had a good experience after conversing with the sellers. You get a feeling for people, and my experience has been, that car guys are good guys in general. This experience left a little to be desired:
I purchased my 63 Fury from Golden Classics, Clearwater, Florida in 2010 after seeing it on Ebay. I emailed them for loads of pictures of areas I was concerned about. They sent everything I wanted. I called and talked to several sales people and was told that the owner had driven this car to a cruise-in 40 miles away the night before and was astounded about how much power it had and how well it ran. The owner said that the only problem he could see was that there was a crack in the right side dash pad and he wasn't comfortable sending the car out unless that was fixed, because otherwise the car was super nice. He said he would split the cost with me if I bought the car. I am pretty good at reading people and had no reason to doubt their honesty, even doing a BBB and Google check on them.
I bought the car and had it shipped across the country in an enclosed hauler. Upon arrival the first trip around the block resulted in a cloud of blue smoke trailing the car. The dash pad looked to have been done by an amateur. Other than that, it looked pretty good. I immediately tore the top end of the motor apart and discovered that the max wedge heads had been massively ported and the intake gaskets were leaking and saturated with oil being sucked into the cylinders. There is no way that car was driven to a cruise-in. I removed the dash pad and discovered that someone had just stretched new vinyl over the old padding, cracks and all. At that point I decided to go all out, as I wanted a reliable, sharp looking driver. It was good I pulled the motor and tore it completely down. Whoever assembled it had used tons of silicone and a bunch of pieces had ended up partially clogging the oil pump pick-up.
At any rate, 5 years later every part and piece of that car has been replaced or refurbished. It is now a reliable driver with fuel injection, 4 wheel disc brakes, a working convertible top and many other improvements. The only thing I didn't touch was the paint which attracted me to it in the first place.
They couldn't have known about the silicone, but I was pissed that they lied to me about driving the car and having a "professional" repair the dash. They sure lived up to the "used car salesman" moniker...
I purchased my 63 Fury from Golden Classics, Clearwater, Florida in 2010 after seeing it on Ebay. I emailed them for loads of pictures of areas I was concerned about. They sent everything I wanted. I called and talked to several sales people and was told that the owner had driven this car to a cruise-in 40 miles away the night before and was astounded about how much power it had and how well it ran. The owner said that the only problem he could see was that there was a crack in the right side dash pad and he wasn't comfortable sending the car out unless that was fixed, because otherwise the car was super nice. He said he would split the cost with me if I bought the car. I am pretty good at reading people and had no reason to doubt their honesty, even doing a BBB and Google check on them.
I bought the car and had it shipped across the country in an enclosed hauler. Upon arrival the first trip around the block resulted in a cloud of blue smoke trailing the car. The dash pad looked to have been done by an amateur. Other than that, it looked pretty good. I immediately tore the top end of the motor apart and discovered that the max wedge heads had been massively ported and the intake gaskets were leaking and saturated with oil being sucked into the cylinders. There is no way that car was driven to a cruise-in. I removed the dash pad and discovered that someone had just stretched new vinyl over the old padding, cracks and all. At that point I decided to go all out, as I wanted a reliable, sharp looking driver. It was good I pulled the motor and tore it completely down. Whoever assembled it had used tons of silicone and a bunch of pieces had ended up partially clogging the oil pump pick-up.
At any rate, 5 years later every part and piece of that car has been replaced or refurbished. It is now a reliable driver with fuel injection, 4 wheel disc brakes, a working convertible top and many other improvements. The only thing I didn't touch was the paint which attracted me to it in the first place.
They couldn't have known about the silicone, but I was pissed that they lied to me about driving the car and having a "professional" repair the dash. They sure lived up to the "used car salesman" moniker...
