How to NOT buy a Tesla

That’s right! The foxes bought a Tesla! However, I can’t do anything the “normal” way.

93 Accord on the chopping block

My 93 accord is my favorite car I’ve driven. For many reasons…

I’ve had it through young adulthood to current adulthood (I will never say I’m old)
I had it from single and mingling, to a family car
It has a rebuilt engine thanks to my brother
It’s been through all stages of my life

However, it’s showing more signs of age than me. The seat belts don’t retract well because of the carseats. When it starts there is a new sound I’m not familiar with. The radio hasn’t worked in 5 years (which is why I can hear the new sounds).

Why a Tesla

I have a wonderful solar array
PG&E won’t pay much for any power sent back
Lot of Tesla parts for cheap
Lots of videos of others rebuilding salvage Tesla
Salvage Teslas are all over, many times they will be a “total loss” for a fender bender.

Auction Sites

How does one get a salvage tesla? I used copart.

To use copart you need to be a used car dealer, which I am not. Why do you need to be a used car dealer? Probably $$$.

Instead I used A better bid. Which is copart but as an online dealer.

They are all too happy to charge you a bunch of money to “provide a service”.

Before you get too excited on the prices you are seeing for cars. Take a look at their fee calculator.

For my car, I “bought it now” for $12.5k. But in the end it cost me $15691 + $300 for storage. Quite a bit more than 12.5k. And it goes up percentage based. So a more expensive bid is more expensive fees (taxes and other).

Auction Process

If you don’t “buy it now”. You need to wait till the car goes to auction. There really isn’t much reason to bid earlier because it will not sell till it’s at auction. If you bid before auction, you are only driving the price of the car up. Which is only good if it’s in reserve

The auction is a real auction, but with bidders all over the world. If you’re interested, I would make an account with copart and watch one. It’s pretty fun.

That being said, these auctions are for the seller to get the most money possible. Not for the buyer to get the best deal.

For example… I won this Tesla for $13,000

Currently, it still hasn’t sold!

But when I won, it hadn’t passed the reserve price.

When an auction doesn’t pass reserve price, Copart gives the seller 2 business days time where 3 things can happen:

Seller can offer it for less (or the price you gave)
You can offer more
Seller can walk away without saying anything and re-list it.

#3 is exactly what happened, and I would bet happens every time. Even better, when they reposted, they reposted the starting bid at $13000 (my winning bid). Also, I couldn’t bid on anything till they closed the unsuccessful sale, because my money was tied up with them. What a racket.

That’s why I chose “buy it now” the 2nd time. I’m pretty sure that is often the reserve price, and a seller won’t sell it for less anyway. Sometimes an auction will drum up the price much higher, so why wait?

Pay for your car

One other wonderful aspect of ABetterBid is when you need to pay for your car via wire transfer, almost immediately. They take credit card to allow you to bid on cars, but they won’t take it for payment. you have 2 business days to pay them or be charged $50 fee. If you don’t pay in 5 business days they’ll relist your car and not refund you any fees.

A perfect storm

Win a car on Thursday night, they call that a business day. You have till EOD Friday to find nearly $16k in cash to wire to ABetterBid. Which is effectively 1 business day, or nearly the same business day because businesses aren’t open thursday night.

Luckily I have good friends and money squirreled away in many accounts. But it was an exciting Friday.

Transporting Cars

Now I paid $300 dollars in storage fees…. Another little thing slightly mentioned by ABetterBid

Shipping a car from LA to SF bay area is around $400 bucks from anyone online.

Here’s a break down of the choices of shipping I could/had to do:

ABetterBid contracting through Bidux = $1200
Bidux directly = $900
Find my own transporter = $400

I obviously picked finding my own transporter, that’s how I work. Everyone in the internet is eager to get your business for transporting a car. They are less eager to do the work, but very eager to hold on to your money.

I signed up Saturday for one company and by Wednesday they still hadn’t found me a driver.

Wednesday (nearly a week later) I got on with a different company, and they were actually helpful. ABetterBid won’t release the code to get the car unless you send them a copy of your transporter’s insurance. Another tactic to try to get you to use their transporter.

The driver didn’t get my car 8 days later (Friday) because he was pulled over by the police, which kept him from getting my car somehow. 11 days later (Monday) a backup driver for me.attempted to get my car.

He couldn’t pickup the car because I didn’t want to pay the storage fees over the weekend (since it wasn’t my fault). But I was sick of the process so I paid the $120 so they would release the car.

Unfortunately my transporter was not honest. My Car arrived with a big crack in the windshield. He called me partway here and said he had to tie down the hood to not lose it. I thought he was being considerate. Not so much… He also asked for an additional $50 for “his trouble” getting the car out of the lot. We did not pay him more for his contractual obligation.

Broken Windshield

I trusted the transporter and went after copart for having my windshield damaged while I paid for storage fees. Turns out this is a common occurrence. They sent me 2 pictures of the car

As well as this information

“there is no documentation of the transporter advising us of any issues or additional damages to the vehicle. Per camera footage, the vehicle left the yard with no damage to the windshield as you can see in the images.

This damage occurred after the vehicle left the yard. Some instances include a rock hitting the windshield or the transporter failing to secure the hood, allowing it to open while being transported”

The transporter was required to take pictures of the car when he picked it up and delivered it (to cover himself). Unfortunately his pickup picture is actually 150 miles north of the pickup location and the following day. Luckily the pictures are watermarked with it. The timing coincides with when he called me to tell me that he had tied the windshield down… It seems he wasn’t doing it out of the goodness of his heart.

I’m working with the transporter and the contracted guy to try to get insurance to pay for it. I know he was insured, because it was required… gratefully

Reception of Car

My goal was to get one without airbags that deployed…. I failed at that too. Here’s the pictures, if you look real close, you can tell I was wrong.

Turns out without the front bumper there is way more damage than I expected.

But I got a free bumper :). It clearly was either not there when the accident happened, or put on front later so some unsuspecting person, like me, would pick it up.

Body of work

Here’s, so far, what I need to work on:

No bumpers
Damaged subframe
No radiator
Deployed airbags
Destroyed seatbelts
Who knows what’s missing with the wiring to the headlights/outside speaker

However, the care did “run and drive” to the back of my driveway. And it does fully charge. The girls love playing in it. And since it’s broken/salvage, I don’t mind at all.

Optimistic still

This isn’t what I wanted, and it’s more work than I expected. But I think it’ll still be worth it in the end. So far it needs about $3k in parts. So I’m hopeful that I can get a rebuilt Tesla for less than $20k

I’m hopeful I can get this to be the car that I had thought I was getting

How to NOT Buy a Tesla