Questions and advice for vehicle sellers on Craigslist

Let me be honest.  I don't care that your car is the cleanest around.  I can clean the freaking car myself.  Tell me more important things; for instance, the AC works, the pickup is really good, your personal measurements of gas mileage, whether there are minor dings anywhere, and on and on.

Please don't yell at me.  I've seen posts saying "Don't bother e-mailing or texting!  No low ballers!"  I think you will find that it is hard enough to sell your vehicle without screaming text at people looking at your ad.

When I see that you've just replaced the transmission and the water pump and the battery and the O2 sensor and the AC compressor, I don't think, "Hey!  This car is half new and sure to work well for a long time now!"  I think, "Oh God, this piece of machinery is falling apart.  I will now navigate away from this page."  Leave that out of your ad until someone asks you about it.

Don't spell the make or model of your car incorrectly.  I have seen way too many "Infinity"s and "Carolla"s for sale.

Dealers: don't try to sell me an '02 Civic with 182k miles on it for $8500--that's idiotic--I don't care how cool your in-house appraiser thought the rims were.

Please don't tell me that 2xx,000 miles "is nothing for a [insert make of car]."  Two hundred something thousand miles is not "nothing" for any make.  Instead of saying stuff like that, you could tell me you did all the expensive routine maintenance on it already (e.g. tune-ups and whatever).

Why did you put high performance tires on your hybrid Civic?  Did you also put aftermarket exhaust on it?

Please don't tell me the 2003 you're trying to sell "still has new car smell!"  You sprayed that weird new car smell spray in it and you're actually trying to pass it off as being eight years old.  If all the chemicals in the plastic and adhesive in the interior are still leaching off to that extent eight years post-sale, I should probably actually be worried.

Why would you list your price as $7500 and then say "will not consider offers under $7200"?  That means I can just waltz in and argue you right down to $7200 because I know you're willing to go that low.  I mean really guys.  Might as well just post "$7200 firm" and forget about the extra $300.

I love it when people say they have the Carfax available upon test drive.  That's brilliant, and that saves me and anyone else who's interested in the car money.  It makes me like you already.

Probably more things are coming.  Also I am falling completely in love with a different car each day.  Yesterday it was a gray '04 Mazda3 hatch.  Today it is a completely obscene silver '03 Celica GT with a TRD package and a spoiler to be ashamed of.  But I'm telling myself that I'm young now, and will only be for a little while longer, and now is the time to buy completely unreasonable cars.  Also it gets 27-29 city and 33-36 highway and is a stick.  <3

It's one of these.  Can you imagine me driving this?  Also, can you imagine this getting 36 MPG?

Slalom on the highway and awkward eye contact

We drove back from my husband's family last night (I think it was about a six hour drive).  A couple interesting things happened.

So I'm in the right hand lane when a ambulance with sirens on comes swooping down the on-ramp.  I get to the left to make room for them, and brake so they can go ahead and get in front of me into the left lane.  Any reasonable person would have done that.  The ambulance keeps tearing down the road, getting behind oblivious people who then get over a second too late or so (and of course this slightly annoys me--do people just not realize they have a rearview?), but then it reaches a pair of trucks going side by side as trucks tend to do.  One in the fast lane, one in the slow lane, with the one in the fast lane going 1 MPH faster than the one in the slow lane.  These people in a normal situation make me want to throttle someone.  But this time, the ambulance comes sirening behind the one in the fast lane, and neither truck really changes speed.  The one in the fast lane maybe started going a little faster, but as I understand it he was probably limited by the amount of power he had.  So the burden fell to the moron on the right, to brake hard enough that the fellow on the left could actually quickly pass him and get in front of him to let the ambulance pass and go save someone's life.  No.  This idiot did not brake once.  Maybe he was too stupid to understand that he could have played a role in getting the other truck over.  I hope he was that stupid because otherwise he was just inconsiderate, to the point of allowing his lack of courtesy and his own concern for his own speed to potentially let someone die.  I swear that ambulance had to wait a full minute to pass, which is absolutely absurd.  Anyway.

Volunteer firefighters kept flying by, big trucks or SUVs with flashers on.  A blue official-looking utility truck on the left grassy shoulder swung out across the highway diagonally to get to the paved right shoulder (I imagine accelerating with all he had) a bit too close in front of me, so I had to brake a bit hard and get from the right lane into the left lane, first so I minimized the chance of crashing into his side, and second, so he didn't have to stay on the shoulder.  Sure enough he got from the right shoulder into the right lane, but he ended up having to get back on the shoulder permanently a while later after the traffic started backing up from the stop.  Eventually everyone was stopped or trying to merge into the left lane and then stop (the accident was in the right lane), so volunteer firefighters kept having to ride by on the grassy shoulder on the left.  We finally got up to the accident, and from what we saw, there was a two-car collision near a steep shoulder (with a guardrail).  An SUV had apparently swerved into the guardrail toward the beginning of it, torn the guardrail up out of the ground and bent it toward the incline at almost a 90 degree angle.  The SUV had flipped over fully and was resting on its tires with a pretty crunched-up looking roof.  Later on, at the other end of the guardrail once the steep shoulder I guess had let off some, there was a sedan (maybe a newer Chevy? didn't get a good look) facing the wrong way on the paved shoulder with a hugely dented left front bumper.  I have no idea what happened between those cars.

Later on, much after the accident, I was cruising along peacefully in the left lane minding my own business, going 80 MPH.  Apparently I either hadn't been checking my rearview enough or the guy didn't even give me a chance to get to the right, but before I knew it I was being passed on the right by a light blue Suzuki (From checking on MSN Autos, I think it was an Aerio?  Hell if I know; no one cares about Suzukis) going a little over 85 MPH.  It looked like he was going to try to make a narrow pass between me and another car, so I let off the gas a little, but a split second after that I saw the Suzuki braking hard and I saw flashing blue lights behind it.  Jamie went, "HA!  He got pulled.  I made some really weird eye contact with that guy."  So apparently this guy was passing us, staring at us to see who we were, made creepy eye contact with Jamie, and then got pulled over.  That is the most awkwardly hilarious thing I've had happen in a while.

Regrettable.

I think that was about it.  Lessons from that trip: don't block ambulances even if you're stupid, and don't pass on the right going 85 MPH--even if you are in South Carolina.