1989 T-Bird FAIL

A few days ago, I went with my father to look at a 1989 Ford Thunderbird that a coworker of his was selling. We were fixing the brakes on the left side rear wheel, and had just gotten the wheel back on when “BANG!” The jack goes straight through the floorboard. This was bad for two reasons. For one, my father, who is pushing fifty, has had two heart attacks in the last six years, and this gave him the scare of his life because he was under it not two minutes before. Second, that rusty junkyard special nearly came down on all three of us and rolled into the guy’s wife. After all this, the guy still had the nerve to try and sell us the car, which can’t go more than forty miles per hour before it cuts out. The tires were at least 15 years old, bald as Terry Bollea and had a lone white strip on the sidewall, a sad excuse for whitewalls.

For a car that’s twenty years old, the mileage wasn’t extremely high, about 164,000. The engine itself ran okay, save for a slight misfire and a clogged cat. If it hadn’t been so rusted out, I would have bought it myself (it was only $200, and even I can afford that). It would’ve made for a perfect Super Coupe swap. The interior wasn’t in bad condition, but the seats were caked with some ungodly material that nobody, not even the owner could explain. The car handled very well, but in its sorry state, even taking it around the block was one hell of a risk.

What about you? Did  you come close to buying a car only to find out that it’s a total bomb? Or did you buy that car and find out too late?