The CSL I nearly bought!

[Pip1968]

Well I thought that I would post this on the forum as a bit of ‘bubblegum’ for the eyes. I was discussing with a colleague today the difficulties of both buying and selling ‘high value’ cars. There are so many scammers seemingly these days that you have to be on your toes not to get caught out. I had a near ‘Nigerian’ miss with a guy in Australia who wanted to buy my e34 M5 having not actually seen it. He of course had someone in England who owed him £10k so they would post me the cheque if I could post him a cheque for the difference (£5k) and he would arrange shipping of the car. I did not think you could miss despite the fact that I did think it was weird. Let’s face it if a cheque clears you assume that is it done and dusted. Not so the banks have it well stitched up in a win win situation.Anyway the long and short of it was I did suss it and so got him to send me two cheques as one was ‘lost’ in the post and passed all the details to the police. I must speak to them to find out what happened to the case.
Anyway he bought an Aston Martin DB9 (only the V for £65k or so and both parties were as suspicious of each other as one would be. ‘Luckily’ £50k went to the finance company direct from my colleague. I use inverted commas as I am not sure if that is or is not safer and I am sure someone will post what problems you can incur. Anyway I swapped my story which was perhaps a near miss and perhaps not. This all took place three years ago.
It was a SG coloured CSL and was up for a bit of a bargain price of ~ £32k whilst others similar were going for £34-36k. The sale was through Pistonheads. The downside was he had some weird advert that said first buyer with the money could have it. Well it seemed to good to be true. He was also being super cautious. He would meet the buyer in Swaffham (do not quote me on that but it was some small village near there – I think). From there he wanted to see a deposit of £1k or so before he would take you to his farmhouse to look at the car. Anyway not perturbed I rang him and he said he had someone coming from Leeds or such like who was leaving at 0900. I asked what would happen if I got there first to which he said it was first there! I immediately Googled his location and my travel time and then tried to factor in the finance and the unquantifiable traffic on the M25 as I had to come from Chatham. Well the long and short of it was it all seemed a little suspicious and I thought to go through the mad rush of trying to get there first was too much effort .
Anyway I thought I would ask if anyone on here bought said CSL in 2007 from the farmhouse in Norfolk.
I finally bought one from a forum user (Mtorque) who lived in SE London who was a thoroughly good bloke. He even delivered the car for me as I was away and my wife did not want to go through the rigmarole.

Pip