2011 Subaru WRX

Heartbreaker.  That summarizes this car pretty well.

If you read about the 2009 Mini then you know that when I research, assess, and purchase a vehicle, my worst case scenario is that I break even. The short story is this: I screwed up.

I found this car all the way over in Lincoln, NE.  Copart auction. Rebuilt title from flood damage. “Run and drive” designation.  60k miles.  I like Subarus.  This would be a fun car.  I figured I’d buy it cheap, sort out a few gremlins from the previous flood damage, tune it up using COBB Accessport and go Stage 2, drive it for a while and then move on. Nope. Didn’t happen.

I drove all the way to Lincoln and towed that turd back home only to discover that it didn’t run and drive.  Unlike most cars I’ve owned, the entire dashboard (every single indicator light) functioned and in unison!  The radiator fans ran constant and the temp gauge read to the nuclear meltdown side of hot.  Previous to this I’d had good experiences with Copart but “previous” had ended here. 

I messed with it for a little while trying to get it to run but figured I’d work on other projects while I waited to get the title back from the state. Heartbreaker.  I got the title back. JUNK, is what the title read.  I could never put this car on the road in Illinois.  Screwed is a word that comes to mind.

I had a few options, (no, crying on the porch step was not one of them) I could try to sell it as-is to someone who would use it for closed course purposes, part it out, or donate it.  I looked into donating it and decided that was the least financially smart option. Parting it out could potentially enable me to recoup my total investment but it would take a while and be a perpetual hassle.  Selling it as-is at a loss seemed like the best compromise.

 So that’s what I did.  It took quite a few months to find someone willing to take a chance on the car but finally that person came along.  In the end I lost $5,000 on the car, and that doesn’t account for my time and effort. 

It was a tough lesson to learn but sometimes its the tough lessons that teach best. 

Deal done, onto the next one.