How do you find that collector car of your dreams? Well, there are many ways, but first you need to put some serious thought into what exactly it is that you want to find.

In 1972 I was teaching a class in business at Eastern Washington State in Cheney, Washington and sharing an office with another graduate student. The car of my dreams at that time was a 1934 Ford roadster. I had been over to the library making Xerox copies of ‘34 Ford advertisements that I had found in magazines of that era and had left the stack of copies on my desk. My office collegue, Ed Zemler spotted the ads and mentioned that there was an old car just like that behind a horse barn near where he lived. Following his directions, I went out to find the car that evening.

Sure enough, it was a putty colored 1934 Ford 5-window coupe. The car was under a little roof near a horse barn… all very original and very respectible. It looked very much like the water color painting by Randy Giovenale below. (Note the water color is print #239 of a limited edition of 975 by this artist.)

I inquired about the car at the farm and found that the owner was working at a bowling alley in Spokane. We tracked him down, bought the car, and immediately set forth to inflate the tires, and tow it home. So, there you have tip number 1:

1. Let your friends and relatives know what you are looking for, and they will help you find it.



2. Let your mind dwell on picturing exactly what it is that you want to find. I know, this sounds very “new age” but there is a good reason that you need to do this. Thoughtfully meditating upon and visualizing the car you want to find will que your sub conscious mind to see things out of the corner of your eye that you would otherwise miss entirely.

Example: In 1974 my brother Delmar and I made a150 mile drive to look at a black and white 1955 Ford Crown Victoria. The car was a horrible pile of junk and we didn’t buy it… but on the return trip I was driving down the I-90 freeway at about sixty miles per when he let out a whoop and said that he had just spotted a black and white Ford Crown Victoria. He had just gotten a glimps for a fraction of a second of the “V” swoop of the side chrome on the Crown Vic out of the corner of his eye.

We got off of the freeway and started searching. The car was in fact a 1956 Ford Crown Victoria, black and white. It was parked in an alley where he could only have seen the drivers door for a brief moment from the freeway. The car looked very good except that someone had just smashed the windshield by throwing a beer bottle at the car. The owner wanted to sell. We made a reasonable offer which he accepted, and the car was the buy of the year for us.
Another example: In 1978 my wife Barbara had purchased a white1963 Studebaker Avante. The car was originally an “R-2″ with the supercharger, but that had been taken off and was not available to us.

I was on a business trip to Pullman, Washington one day when driving through the town of Colfax, Washington at the posted speed of 25 mph, out of the corner of my eye a got a brief glimpse of an oval headlight that to my mind said “Avanti.” I flipped a “U” turn and found a wrecked 1963 Studebaker Avanti lurking behind a service station that had just been towed in.

The car had been rolled end-over-end in a wheat field. Except for the right rear quarter pannel and a piece of the left front fender with the oval headlight, the rest of the fiberglass body was a basket full of pieces. The firewall and the built in Studebaker roll bar had saved the drunken owners life. But most important of all was that the car was an “R-2″ with the supercharger intact. I and a friend from the Studebaker club bought the wreck. I got the supercharger and he got everything else.

The point is that my sub-conscious mind was qued to see that oval Avante headlight when no one else would have spotted it.

3. Think about where a person might be that has a 20 to 30 year old car that is still in good shape. Check out the parking lots and leave a note on the bulletin board at retirement homes and assisted living facilities in your area.
4. Attend the Collector Car Auctions in your area. Take particular note of the “Little Old Lady” cars that are low mileage original but have been brought to the auction by someone who is settling the estate and just wants to liquidate the property.
5. Check your local picture car publication immediately after printing. If you have a weekly or bi-monthly free picture publication of automobiles. Check it out regularly when it is hot off of the press. Look for the new listings that you know were not in the previous edition. If you find something particularly interesting follow up on it immediately. Your goal is to get to the seller before someone else does. I have missed some wonderful opportunities by failing to do this. I have also made some very good buys for our collection by catching the new ads before someone else got to the seller. Here is an important tip: If you know what it is that you are looking for, and if you find it, be prepared to pay cash. If you have a little safe at home, keep some cash on hand for dealing on nights or weekends when a check won’t work but you cannot get to your bank.
6. Do a GOOGLE Search. See: http://www.google.com. If you are not familiar with Google, you will be amazed. You may spend the rest of the day playing with Google.
7. Faithfully follow-up leads… do not pre-judge what you will find. Example: I found a classified ad in our local newspaper for a low mileage 12 year old Chevrolet 3/4 ton pick-up with 10 ft. Camper on it. The ad gave an address but no phone number. The address was in a particularly shabby part of the city. I drove to the address but almost did not get out of my car.

What I found in the back yard at the address was amazing. The truck was virtually perfect in every way. The camper looked like new and was clean as a pin. The elderly couple that lived there had bought a new little motor home and were disposing of the pick-up camper and truck.

The owner allowed as how he was going to sell the rig to the first person who showed up with the cash. It was a Sunday and I had approximately $2,000 in cash. He somewhat reluctantly agreed to declare the rig sold and wait until Monday for me to bring the rest of the purchase price. On the following Monday he told me that he had three or four people who had showed up with cash, but they were too late. Gosh, I hate to see a grown man cry. The truck alone was worth the price he was asking. The like new camper was practically a “freebee.”