A Shelby Horror Story

The following it true, happening quite a few years ago. For obvious reasons, I have left out a lot of details, which will remain confidential.

I work as the Network Administrator in a Law Firm. I had a framed GT-350 art print hanging in my office. One day, one of the Attorneys pointed at the painting and asked if I knew anything about those cars. I told him I had one, had done some restoration work on it and also had 15 years experience in the automotive field. He told me we had a case involving a Shelby and he needed some help.

It seemed that our client sold a GT-350. The buyer had looked at the car for months prior to purchasing it. They came to terms on the price, car and money changed hands. THREE months later, the buyer informs the seller that he wants a refund. He maintains that the car had more rust in it than he was comfortable with. The only problem was the car didn’t have any rust to speak of. The car was now in a storage building and refused to start. The Attorney suspected that something else was going on, but being an Attorney, had no clue as to what might be wrong. First task, get it running.

I advised the Attorney to hire a professional to check it out. He agreed and I contacted a friend who owned a shop and knew his way around Hi-performance engines. There was no external leaks and the oil was clear. The engine would turn over by hand so we knew it wasn’t blown up. There were other problems as it sounded like one cylinder had no compression when cranking.

The no start problem was traced to a bad distributor primary wire. Fixed that and it fired right up, on 7 cylinders, backfiring through the exhaust. After further review, we determined that it had a bent exhaust valve. The repair estimate was $300.00 to pull one head, fix the valve and put it back together. It was obvious that the buyer had over wound the engine and bent a valve. He figured he blew it up. (Anyone who has run a HP engine with a bent exhaust valve knows how bad they sound) Not wanting to take responsibility for this, he did the next best thing, cried foul, hired a Lawyer, made up a some BS reason for giving the car back. When the seller refused, (understandably) he filed a law suit.

Now for the kicker; The buyer no only wanted ALL of his money back, but he wanted and ADDITIONAL $5000.00 for his Attorney fees and trouble! Opposing council was prepared to go to trial. On the surface, there was absolutely no reason the buyer should win. The car didn’t have any of the problems he listed in the suit. It was purely a case of buyers remorse. This is coupled with the fact that he wounded the engine and wanted someone else to pay for his stupidity.

While this sounded like a slam-dunk, it really wasn’t. The Attorney defending the seller estimated that it would cost at least 10K to go to trial. The other factor was this was going to be a Jury trial. There is no telling what the Jury would do. The seller stood a very real chance of losing and spending a lot more money. He decided to bite the bullet, give the PIA buyer his money back WITH the additional 5K.

This story does have a happy ending. Once he had the car back, he fixed the bent valve. He then put the car back up for sale. The price of Shelby’s had risen, and he made more money the second time around than he did on the first transaction.

 

As I remember it, he had an "As Is" clause in the first contract. The seller realized early on that the car was worth a lot more money than he had sold it for. This may have influnced his decision to give the buyer what he wanted, once he found out that the engine hadn't exploded. The buyer got his money back based on the mistaken assumption that he blew up the engine. The original seller re-sold the car for a lot more money the second time around. The only thing that saved his bacon was the fact that at the time, the price of these cars was going up at a very high rate.