I might add that in his desperation he even considered an early 80s Maserati Bi-Turbo that some elderly guy was about to junk - car was TOTALLY messed up, had every bad mark against the title you could imagine - stolen, flood damage, totaled TWICE, fire damage, etc. The stories the old dude regaled my friend's brother were unbelievable.

Essentially, the old guy had bought the car new after selling his business when he retired in the 80s, up in New Jersey. He moved to Maryland, and within a week of his moving the car was stolen and driven backwards into a creek. The thief had tried to reverse at a dead end, misjudged the distance, and rolled right in. The rear end was smashed and flooded, but the car was still pretty new so it was all replaced. Hence flood damage and theft. About four years later the old dude was going through an intersection when a dump truck ran a redlight and crushed him. Car was considered totaled, even for a Maserati, but the guy loved it. He bought it back from the insurance and spent the next three years restoring it, straightening the frame, etc. He somehow retitled it and got it back on the road. However, he had screwed up the main fusebox and a fire started while he was idling outside a mini-mall. Put it out, but melted a lot of plastic and fuxored the wiring. Maserati dealer fixed that. There's the fire damage. Finally, JUST before my friend's brother saw the ad, the old dude totaled it once more, this time his fault, when he took a turn too fast and sideswiped a tree stump. Since the car was already totaled once, his insurance didn't hesitate to do so a second time. However, he paid a Maserati dealer to fix it anyway.. the value had plummeted enough that it wasn't too bad to just repair the damned thing.

All this was contained in an affadavit he signed for my friend's brother, on his lawyer's advice, to provide the new insurance company. Maybe he had to by law, I don't know. The car would have been $5,000 after all that. It was barely driveable, had ALL sorts of problems - bad brakes, one of the turbos was failing, weird noises and smells, all kinds of things. If his friends hadn't stepped in (and his mom), he might have actually bought it...

Afterward, he used to show that affadavit around when he was drunk for laughs... it was insane. The poor car took so much abuse in the 15+ years it was alive...