BlockedBlemishesSteed Creek Investigation

'50s used car buying tips still valid today

My friend Ron Good has been thinning out his collection of vintage automotive paper and recently gave me some 50 to 60 year old magazines.

One of them was the January, 1954 issue of Consumer Reports with the cover story “How to buy a used car.”

Reading it shows not only how far we have come in building better automobiles, but in protecting consumers from unscrupulous used car salesmen. Back then it really was “buyer beware.”

Before the magazine got into tips on what to watch for when shopping for a used car, it listed some of the “tricks of the trade” employed by dishonest used car vendors.

'50s used car buying tips still valid today

  1. my dad said. We barely used the car after arriving in Sofia and the weekend passed without further vehicular incident. But on Monday morning, I went out into the icy streets to dust snow off the car, and noticed that we had two flat tires.
  2. Before the magazine got into tips on what to watch for when shopping for a used car, it listed some of the “tricks of the trade” employed by dishonest used car vendors. Many of these no longer apply (such as “recapping tires whether their carcasses are
  3. It's something you have to get used to. It wears on you, kind of tires you out, but somehow I finished (tied for 18th). “Not a bad week. There's a lot of guys who wished they did that.'' It could have been better if not for the 2-over start,
  4. Soon enough, an ugly blemish becomes a jarring bump, a flat tire or a busted shock. I mention this developing calamity in my front yard by way of declaring solidarity with my country brothers and sisters, the folks lamenting the deterioration of rural
  5. "The number of $25 billion was established by Defence that included both the purchase and the maintenance cost and the budgets were approved through (the) normal process," Ferguson said in support of his explosive audit. He said he couldn't say "who