[njsteve]

So we found one!

The boy has been doing all the research on the various car selling sites. We looked at a white 75,000 mile, 2011 Camaro LT V6 on Saturday that was 65 miles away in Southern NJ. We get there and it is housed inside with their other cars in a boutique dealership. Nice layout. The body and interior are perfect. They get the car outside and when they start it up I immediately hear a problem. There is at least one busted catalytic converter. You can hear the leak from the cracked weld. And also there is a clicking sound from the back of one of the valve covers - a failing variable cam solenoid most likely. We take it out for a test drive and you cant not hear the exhaust leak(s). After the drive we go back inside and I tell the owner about it. He says: "We have a local mechanic who checks out all our cars and fixes whatever is needed. He doesn't work for us so he has no vested interest in underreporting".

Sounds logical but there is no way he couldn't have noticed the noises. What me and the boy deduce is that the mechanic told them about the problems but that they were so expensive to fix, it would have added $2,000 to the price and cut into their profit margin, big time. I was so proud of my son when he said "You got to know when to walk away". :-)

We get home and he goes back to the web and expands his search to 200 miles. He finds a bunch of cars in Virginia. UGH! One in particular is a 2014 Camaro LT V6 in Blue Ray metallic (An almost black color with heavy blue metallic tint). It has 85,000 miles. Carfax checks out with the local Virginia Chevy dealer oil change visits every 3000 months since new, and zero collision history. It was a local car with two local owners that a Dodge dealer took in on trade in May. It has been at the Dodge dealership for almost two months so they were losing money on it it with their floorplan financing eating away at any profit margin.

We drive 225 miles on Monday and get there. It was a very nice car. Nice dealership though they tried their best to pull the usual price add-ons. They tried to convince me there was a $1000 coupon that ADDS $1000 if you don't finance. You gotta be kidding me? - raising the price if you pay cash??? LOL

We told them in no uncertain terms that was a deal breaker. So they got rid of that but we couldn't remove the $399 Lojack unit that they install in every car. I told them to remove it but they wouldn't budge on that one. In the end we got the car for $250 less than the asking price because it had some minor issues like the tire monitor system was showing a fault (turns out someone replaced all the valve stems with old style rubber valve stems, hence no signal). Needs rear brake pads soon and the front tires were from 2016 and showing age cracks. And it had an aux port for the radio that wouldn't acknowledge a plugged in device. (It turns out that 2010 to 2015 Camaros have a base model radio that only charges a phone through that port and allows phone calls but not music uploading - so we ordered a cheap bluetooth adapter for the cigarette lighter socket)

I drove it back to NJ with the boy following behind in our other car. It's a wonderful car actually and the color is killer! The wife already is plotting to steal it from the boy.

He is quite pleased with himself and his purchase and has now fully drunk the Coolaid when it comes to being a car person. (Mission accomplished)

It got 30 mpg on the trip home. That V6 is rated at 323 hp, has 11.5 to1 compression and runs on regular! Holy crap! Whatsup with this modern technology???

I'll post some photos later today.