The long road to farewell
It's always so easy to imagine selling a classic car: Advertisement, phone call, viewing, price negotiation, handshake, goodbye. At least that's what you're led to believe by all the used car formats on DMAX, Nitro, Sport1 or RTL II. But if you don't want to get rid of your car at any price and also want to know that it's in good hands, I recently found out that it can - and will - take time.
After ten years, I had decided to part with my Opel Rekord P. It wasn't an easy decision, after all, the black four-door car had been with me for a third of my life and I had grown very fond of it. But every car loses out to a '54 Studebaker coupé. And keeping both is pointless. They are too similar in character.
With a strange mixture of a feigned, cold sense of duty and an honest guilty conscience, I finally advertised the Opel. And from then on, images of horror flashed before my mind's eye every night: flower vases, wheel trim rings, sun barges, poorly imitated Ascona two-tone paintwork or - worst of all - plush cubes on the interior mirror.
What will the next owner do with it? Will he treat it as well as I did? Maybe that's why I set the price a little higher. In any case, my hope that not every scrap dealer and filler bungler would come forward was only partially fulfilled. Because nobody got in touch at all. Maybe that was a sign. But keep it? Fate's last chance to make me reconsider?
Months went by; the online advertisements expired. I used the time to have one last technical fault rectified. And then another one. And then another. "But once that's done, I'll advertise it again." But that was not to happen. One day, the phone rang in the office. It was a gentleman. He had seen my Opel parked at a garage with a sales note in the window.
Shit, I'd forgotten all about it. He had already spoken to the master mechanic. Would he be allowed to test drive the Rekord? Damn it, how do I get out of this situation? Of course he could. What am I talking about? We make an appointment for the next weekend. On the day of the viewing, the phone rings again. Hopefully a rejection. No, he would only be an hour later.
The conversation is nice. The gentleman knows what he's talking about. He also knows what he's doing. Because he operates the P1 with a routine matter-of-factness, as if he had learned to drive it. And he doesn't like plush cubes either. Then it happens quickly: price negotiation, handshake, goodbye. My record is going into good hands. And with this certainty, saying goodbye is no longer so difficult.
