So I'm going to look at a vintage Volvo. The pictures look good. The car is represented in a positive light except for some light rust. The seller is supposed to meet me at his work, but nobody's there. I leave a couple messages, then start home. A couple miles down the road, the seller calls me and explains that he's hurt his knee and is waiting to be helped at a hospital. He gives me his home address, and says that the car is unlocked and I can check it out.
It looks like a roughly 10 YO restoration. engine compartment and interior look good, but there's flaking bondo and a good bit of rust. The body's a lot rougher than it looks from 30 feet. I look at the undercarriage in a couple of places and..... The front subframe is cracked and failing at the unibody connection. It's not a hairline, but a fissure. Unless I'm seriously missing something, this car is in danger of having it's front end colapse!
The seller sounded like a really nice guy on the phone. But he's selling a car that is not merely rough in places. It's dangerous. What was I to do? The bidding was to end in about 4 hours. He said that he'd only had the car for three weeks, which suggests that he found the problem and didn't want to deal with it, and was passing it to the next shmuck down the line. After some consideration, I decided that it wasn't my duty to be a cop, so I simply texed him something along the lines of: "Your car has a broken frame. Prospective buyers should be informed of this."
So GRM bretheren, I ask you: Did I do the right thing? Or should I have been more active? Does it make any sense for me to contact ebay and inform them so that they may in turn pass the word to the winning bidder? I don't want to start a E36 M3storm, but I feel sorry for the next owner, and even suspect that the entire injured-and-in-a-hospital may have been a ruse to avoid meeting me.
