Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi! I’m Lance Lambert hosting the Vintage Vehicle television show. Something else that
I do is appraise special interest in collector automobiles. One of the most important maybe
the most important part of the automobile makes the overall condition of the exterior
and the body is the running gear, the motor, what’s powering this and what kind of condition
is it in? This particular car this is a 58 Rambler American it has a 3.7 Chev motor in
it, what kind of condition is the motor in? You assess that by having the owner of the
car start the car up, you take a look at how it runs, you look for exhaust leaks, you look
for oil leaks, you listen to the motor, you take a look at any documentation that the
owner has as far as a rebuild on the motor, just checking anything you can that’ll help
you assess the condition of the motor. The mileage on the car, there are lots of cars
out there I’ve appraised cars with 2 and 3 hundred thousand miles on them that are
still on the road that haven’t been rebuilt other than minor tune-ups here and there,
that certainly reflects on the value because that many miles on a car you know it is going
to need some engine work in a short time but you may have a car that the overall car has
hundred and fifty thousand miles on it very common on an older car but the engine may
have been rebuilt five thousand miles ago or five hundred miles ago so it’s been update.
A big thing in cars these days and forever as far as collector cars are concerned is
original equipment, is this the motor that came with this particular car? Of course it
didn’t with this particular car but if you have a 57 Chevrolet and it has the motor that
left the factory and that car is easily worth 50% more and maybe even more than that than
a 57 Chev that’s come out of the factory and had the motor replaced at some time. You
get into cars that’s an enormously important aspect of those cars, if you have a Dodge
Charger that has all of the original equipment or the original motor, everything that is
enormous value if that motors been changed some time there again you can affect the value
enormously 50% easily, it’s reduced in the value of the car often just by the motor not
being the original motor in the car. You establish whether or not it’s the original motor by
the VIN number on the car, by the number on the engine block, they’re all labeled you
can find whether the numbers match in cars, they’re the correct numbers they left the
factory and still have the numbers that match what they were in the factory as far as the
engine and body on the car.