I get sent a lot of Craigslist ads for weird and/or shitty cars by readers. I regard this as one of the biggest perks of my job, right after Jalopnik’s very generous policies regarding colonics. An ad I was sent this morning is interesting, not so much because of the car for sale, but more because of who posted the ad: not the car’s owner.
Generally, I think we’d all agree, you don’t try to sell someone else’s car on Craigslist without the owner asking you to do that. There’s also the excellent question of why anyone would try to sell someone else’s car, especially outside of the context of some scam to get the money for that car, which this is not.
The question of why has an answer because of the kind of car it is—a Chrysler K-Car variant—and the fact that the person who put up the ad appears to be very involved with the Chrysler K-Car Club. Here’s the copy from the ad:
Here folks is a very rare convertible. It has been abandoned inside a dark secret parking structure at Warner Brothers Studios. This would be a perfect car for a collector or a movie car warehouse. The unreasonable owner wants $3800 for it, but in reality it has been sitting about seven years, so I think $1500 would be more reasonable. It does run and drive, and a new transmission was installed. We know it is a four cylinder engine, but information is sketchy and pictures scarce, due to the unwillingness of the owner to provide basic information online. I have this person’s contact, so I can refer you to him if you are seriously interested in the car. Also, join the Chrysler K-Car Club and help us save another K-car at www.chryslerkcar.com. Mileage, who knows? Whether the owner is willing to let someone check the car out in person first is debatable, but you can try. I think if this owner is reasonable, and once he has calmed down. he may realize the Chrysler K-Car Club is a legitimate organization with no money merely trying to save K-cars from the crusher. Don’t let this car rot in the parking garage any longer.
Much like a long-abandoned K-Car’s trunk, there’s a lot of crap to unpack here. Based on statements like “The unreasonable owner wants $3800 for it,” and “the unwillingness of the owner to provide basic information online,” it seems pretty safe to say that the car’s owner was not interested in having this ad placed on Craigslist.
Based on the references to the Chrysler K-Car Club, I feel confident in thinking that this ad was posted by that club’s um, passionate owner, who, based on the content of the posts on the club’s Facebook page, may be a bit of a zealot.
I say this because the posts on that page include quotes like
“Remember, the junkyards are now government owned, whose sole purpose is to wipe out the classic K-car from the face of the earth.”
Yes, the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Junkyards has issued statements mentioning the total and complete elimination of K-Cars from America’s roads. I saw the press conference, where the press secretary took a sledgehammer to a 1983 Aries.
The Club’s owner has also said other statements that are questionable at best, and we’ve reached out to him to talk about those.
Now, I’m no fan of the K-Car; I grew up with friends who drove those, and even back when they were relatively new, I found them to be charmless boxes of shit. Still, I’m never going to begrudge anyone’s unreasonable automotive loves, and I’m all for preserving K-Cars and people loving them.
This, though, is a bit nuts. You can’t just impose your own weird-ass K-Car zealotry on other people, and make reduced price for sale ads for their cars without their approval just because you think the car deserves better. Oh, and by ‘you,’ I guess I don’t mean you, sexy readers, because you don’t seem as K-Car addled as the K-Car club guy. That’s the ‘you’ here.
And, really, getting angry and bitter about people not caring if K-Cars slowly rust away is just going to lead to madness.
(Thanks, Mike!)