Collectible Sports Cars: Up Close

In the first installment of this series we went over some of the more popular used sports cars on the market, and some "rolling refuse" to avoid. Once you have chosen your dream make and model, it's time to pick out a good one that will live in your garage, not the repair shop.

First-Person
Find some examples to look at in person. Although online auctions and dealers are popular, you'd be buying the car blind, which is seldom a good idea with older cars. A small low-res pic of a bright red roadster can hide a multitude of sins (and a fair amount of rust besides). If you can find a car locally, so much the better, but at least make sure you or your mechanic can inspect the car in person before money changes hands.

Attraction
Cars from the 1970s and earlier have potential problem areas that have been largely eliminated on modern cars. Rust was a common problem that affected domestic and imported cars alike. It is unusual to find a sports car from the 1950s or 1960s that has not rusted in several common locations, so take a magnet along when you inspect steel-bodied cars. If the magnet won't stick to the body, there is body filler under the paint hiding rust or accident damage.

Moisture
Check the sill area underneath the doors, then pull up the carpets and check the floor area, since leaky rag tops often let rain into the interior. Next check the footwells, particularly on unibody cars like Porsches, MGs and Jaguars. Then look for tiny bubbles in the paint, particularly in areas where body panels connect underneath the skin. For instance, examine just in front of the doors on Porsches or at the fender join lines on MGs. Finally inspect the trunk floor (also a water collection point) and in the bottom of the battery box, which is usually attacked by acid corrosion at some point.

Rust
A warning sign of serious rust problems may be a fresh coat of undercoating on the bottom of the car. Undercoating does a very poor job of protecting a car from rust anyway (experts say it actually hurts by trapping moisture underneath), but it is sometimes applied to cover up serious rust damage. Although cars from dry states like Texas and Arizona are less likely to be affected, rust can strike anywhere, so you must inspect any car carefully.