Among the benefits of buying a one-owner car is getting the documents usually lost to the passage of time (or maybe it's just the sloppy record keeping of previous owners).
When I purchased my 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T SE from the original owner I was handed not only the original set of keys and the original owner's manual but also the original bill of sale, original title and original warranty card. Because this particular Challenger served as a dealer demo car for the first 15 months of its life the documents tell an interesting story.
For instance, you can see on the bill of sale that the first private owner (I've blocked out his name for privacy reasons) paid $3,200 for the car on March 22, 1971. Just to confirm, I paid a tad more than that for this one-owner Dodge Challenger R/T SE when I bought it on March 13, 2006. The car was sold by Percival Motors of Algona, Iowa, and the Dodge was considered a used car at the time. That $3,200 included license and taxes. Not a bad deal, especially for a loaded R/T SE with the 440 engine.
Curiously, even though it was a considered a used car with 9,359 miles on it when the first owner bought it, he still received the full balance of the original Chrysler warranty (5 years/50,000 miles I believe) because the first "owner" was the dealership, and the car was not in private use up until that point. Pretty cool.
However, the coolest part of the original paperwork? In my opinion it has the be the color description on the title. Even though it's a government document the Challenger's color is not listed as its common name, purple, but as the Dodge marketing name, "Plum Crazy."
Ha! The words Plum Crazy, right in the middle of the Department of Safety seal. That's just plain groovy!
By yankeez
on May 19, 2010
10:39 AM
It'll be interesting to see if all my original dealer and title paperwork for my '09 Challenger will be as interesting and valuable to a prospective owner in 2049... but I seriously doubt I'll be around that long to ever know.