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LeBaron Coupe

Photo (below) is of Elaine's "old" 1988 LeBaron. Bought it with 150,000 miles on it with a
bad engine. Rebuilt the engine and she drove it for 3-1/2 years. Now has 220,00 on it, still
runs great, still doesn't burn oil. But she did plastic surgery on it a couple weeks ago.
Not real bad, but I thought if I could find her a low mileage newer one, that would be nice.

I found a deal for her on a 1987 LeBaron (she like these cars), one we had to buy!
   
This is the face lift that was not bad but not worth
fixing on an old car. (we will sell this one soon).
I pulled it out a little since this photo was taken,
now doesn't look quite so bad.
Here is Elaine's "new" coupe. It is so nice it looks almost like a new car. Yes it is a year older model than the one she has had for years, but it has 120,000 less miles on it.

Tires are only fair but we just bought new tires for her other
LeBaron so we will just swap tires.
It is the same color as her "old" one and has the same wheels on it.
This one has leather interior though and a digital dash. It also
has chrome around the wheel wells and up front it has lights
on the side of the lower fender that light while in a sharp turn.

Here is what the digital dash looks like. It has 100,675 miles on it.
Car was owned by an older couple, the husband passed away this
last April, she didn't need two cars so she sold this one.

 

Because this car is an '87 it doesn't have the drivers side air bag
like her other one did.

Leather interior is nice, no tears, almost looks new still.

It also has:
4 cylinder 2.2 engine with turbo
automatic transmission
digital dash... it will talk to you if anythng is wrong,
like low oil, door not shut, water temp too high, etc.
Air Conditioning

The story of getting this car....
We thought about getting a newer car for Elaine after her very minor "mishap" a couple weeks ago with her LeBaron. But decided, we don't want the payments.

Saturday we were off to Eugene, Oregon which is 115 miles away (for the graduation party for her niece) Right before we left I checked craigslist for a nice LeBaron. Thought someday we would get lucky and find a very low miles car owned by a little old lady that was perfect...
yeah sure. But if I look, maybe in a few months that "could" happen.
Yes, I play the lottery.

Anyway, right before we left for Eugene I took a quick look on line. I found one, maybe.
It looked white in the photo, but Elaine does not want a white car. Too hard to keep clean compared to silver. I called, no answer, I left a message.

We headed out on our trip. About one minute before we got out of cell phone range, he calls back about the car. It is silver, low miles (for the year) , great condition, little old lady owned (his mom). Imagine that! Her husband had passed away in April and the car had been sitting ever since, she doesn’t drive it as she has a newer car.

I was the first caller of many that had called and left a message. He said he would hold it for us so we could look first, but I am 5 hours away from the car. So I call and have my daughter, that is only 50 miles from the car, drive the 50 miles to go look at it. She called me back with a good detailed report...good clean oil, no water in the oil, runs good, looks great. Car is what he says it is.

I call him back after my daughter looked it over and say we could drive up after the graduation party we were heading to, he says he is going to a graduation party also. We agree he will hold the car and we will meet up at 8 pm. After our party we head up to where the car is, another 100 miles north of where we are in Eugene.

We drive, get a little lost..twice. I don’t have his phone number as my cell phone battery died and I didn’t bring the charger. I didn’t think we would be gone that long. Call my daughter from a phone booth, she helps with directions as she was there before. We find the place. The place is way out in the country, near a little town called Carlton, Oregon...outside of Portland 50 miles near McMinnville. Elaine is afraid that because we are 1/2 hour late, it will be sold to someone else. She is a little tense. Thinking this was too good to be true anyway to drive this far.

We get there just before dark. We look the car over, it is NICE. It is silver just like her other one and has the same mag wheels on it as her old one. We test drive it about 6 miles to McMinnville while also stopping by the ATM for more cash. We go back, exchanged money and title and head the 236 miles back home. I drive the “old” one and she drives the one we just bought.
We get home about 3:45 am.

What a day.