Following on from the
advice on ebay fiats coupe!! thread, as visiting relatives this weekend in the area I went and had a quick look at this Coupe:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=180332036334It didn't seem that bad in the ad, and the guy selling it said that he'd let it go for the £1250 reserve.
First off, the guy was a dealer in prestige cars under 3 years old, and had received the Coupe as a part-exchange. He'd just started selling older cars on ebay (from his home, which was a huge mansion easily costing over £750k). I know about being wary of traders selling from home, so wasn't expecting a mint example.
When we arrived, someone else was looking over the car. When they'd finished, we took a look around.
First thing I noticed was how poor the alloys were. The fronts were badly kerbed all round and the rears were peeling too. This instantly made me think this hadn't been looked after. The rest of the bodywork wasn't too bad, a couple of bumper scuffs and not many dings in the sides.
Looking under the car, the undertray was still there but the passenger footwell looked slightly dented from underneath, probably from bad jacking.
Inside the car was quite a shock. The front leather seats were badly worn, as was the steering wheel and the centre console, and the carpet was ripped in the passenger footwell. There was some sort of clear gooey syrup in and running out of the rear ashtray too! It hadn't been looked after at all and looked much more aged than my 20v which has done 125k miles compared to this one's 78k. It made me doubt if the indicated mileage was true, as although there was a service book, there were no old MOTs to back up the mileage.
Under the bonnet didn't look great either with rust around the sides and front of the chassis, and the manifold sounded cracked.
The test drive was interesting. The clutch was about to go and you couldn't put any power down. The revs would shoot up if you even tried to give it more than half throttle and the biting point was so high it was right at the top of the pedal's travel. The screen also had a stone chip in which had started spreading. When stopped at a junction, the eggy cat smell came into the car, something I've not smelt in a Coupe before. The drivers window rattled loads too, I didn't even bother seeing if they, the sunroof or the air-con worked.
So, once the test drive was over I'd decided this was probably the worst Coupe I'd ever been in! And what's more, the guys that had been looking at it when we turned up were waiting around and made him an offer, not for the £1250 reserve which he told me he'd take, but for £1500! I'd say it was worth probably half that, as the cambelt needed doing too.
It really opened my eyes to the quality of Coupes around, especially what's to be found on ebay.
