1972 Triumph Spitfire MkIV

Okay. Sometimes I'm an idiot. One Friday afternoon I was bored at work and started browsing eBay. For some unknown reason I checked out Triumph Spitfires. I found one for sale in Buffalo. It was the vintage I liked (chrome bumpers). I was within the range that the owner was willing to transport it. And there were two other key factors. The ad read "Engine is complete and runs great" and "No rust or rot." I figured that if the engine is fine, and if there's no body work or structural rebuilding required, that I could handle any other little-shit work that needed doing, no matter how much of it there was.

The auction ended that Sunday evening. Against my better judgment, I put down a last-minute bid and won the auction. Within a week the guy dropped it off. I was immediately disappointed. First of all, the engine did not run great. It ran crappy. He said so himself as he was backing it off the trailer. Secondly, although not as significant, there was a rust hole in the passenger-side floor board. Still, that constituted two bald-faced lies in his eBay description.

Did I call him on it? Did I report him to eBay? Did I insist he refund my money and take the car away? Of course not. I fucked around with the car for a while. Nothing I did made it any better. In fact it kept running worse and worse until it wouldn't run at all any more. I had friends over to look at it. I had a Triumph authority over to look at it. Nothing helped. The piece of shit has been sitting in my primary garage taking up valuable space ever since.

One day I will get it running, and it will be a fun car. I haven't had a British roadster since my first car at age 17. But in the mean time, I'm not very happy.

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