I need some advice on trading a vehicle....

I've got a deal in the works to trade one Mustangs for a 94 Supra TT {converted to a single turbo, which I prefer}.

Its a straight up trade except for a few details. He has an extra hood that I want, so I will be trading the shipping for the hood, which is fine as me and a friend are the ones who are going to be doing the delivery, and pick up.

Since its about a 9 hour drive I would like to have some assurance that I wont get there and the other guy change his mind. I've told the Supra guy that if there is ANY more pics of anything, or questions to ask me now, so there will be no whining, or mind changing when I get there.

I can't really think of anything to get as an assurance, but my mind is overloaded anyway with trying to take care of all of the details.

I don't think we could trade titles by mail as my state don't issue titles. All I could send is a notarized bill of sale.

I was thinking that many of you have done this at one time in your life, or maybe heard of someone who did, and could give me some tips.

I haven't done a trade but I did get screwed over in a deal where the guy only gave me a bill of sale and no title. He told me it was in a safety deposit box and would mail it to me. I gave up because I mainly needed the parts. I was young and dumb.

Did you ever get your title?

Better make sure you get a title! A friend of mine once bought a car strictly for parts (some POS 12 year old Hyundai Elantra I think it was). The seller didn't have a title and the car did not run. The price was cheap, so my friend really didn't care. Then when he got the parts off that he wanted and tried to scrap the car, no junk yard would take it without the title. Not sure if it's the law, or just the junk yards trying to protect themselves from unknowingly buying stolen cars.

Let's just say it was a huge waste of time, effort and money to get a title just to scrap the car. There really wasn't much other choice, other than to go ditch the car in the middle of nowhere, but try convincing a tow truck driver to do that for you!

No easy answer to this. Best way to minimize whining and mind-changing is to make him have some skin in the game. If it's 9 hours to his house, make him drive 4.5 and you drive 4.5. Then you'll see a)If he's serious, and b)he'll be less quick to change his mind after spending a day and a tank of gas driving.

Other than that, that scenario could happen when you're just swapping vehicles.

Hey jd, the deal went south about a week ago... the story was told in mtrain's build thread.
Look about halfway down this page.

Sigh...always late to the ball...thanks sincity