I'd even argue that certain states are better than others for generally good vehicles vs. bad.

I've never seen a good Vic come out of New Mexico. Albuquerque is the worst. Colorado cars tend to be past their prime too.

Good cars out of Oregon and Washington. Utah is good too. Idaho is pretty good. Nevada tends to be rode hard and put away wet, like the cars see a lot of action. Wyoming is hail storm riddled, rusted out, ice storm crap. California can be pretty good and shot out, its hit or miss. Arizona cars can be good, but since they don't rust, tend to get driven longer than most before auctioning.

I take it you don't do much with north east cars? All the states you mentioned - cars from there would fetch a premium here because even the newest Panther in NY looks like absolute trash by now.

My Nevada HP car is in incredible shape. Like literally blows me away every time I work on it. I heard NHP is very meticulous on maintenance, but I've never been able to dig into that and find out why or for sure.

On no, I'd never touch any northeast car in a billion years.

I generally won't buy anything east of the Front Range of Colorado because of hail damage.

All you east coast guys should be buying western cars and shipping them east, although something from the non-Hurricane zone of the South wouldn't be too bad.

https://tmauction.proxibid.com/Vehicles-...mation/61178430

This one is VERY intriguing. 2007 LX Sport used by a Sherrifs Dept in north FL. 115k, sitting at $2600 with 4 days (as of my posting this) to go. It's coming from an auction house that seems to handle quite a bit of FL surplus.

I'm gonna say that ends up at $5k. I think by 07, LX Sports were relatively rare, correct? I wanna say at that point the package wasn't even the "LX Sport" package anymore and in 08 or 09 they stopped offering the package outright?

That one looks pretty good. Big paint flaw in the center of the hood, of course and the driver's seat looks like it has multiple rips. But the color is really good, the mileage is low and it's a Sport.

Don't bid early.

Any thoughts on the cheapest way to ship a car? I've been contemplating doing just that next but I'm afraid I'll pay as much for shipping as I do for the car.

You'll pay about a grand, give or take, depending on the broker or how lucky you get. It's a scammy industry, with a lot of bait and switch. It helps to be along major interstates and to be flexible with your time.

Or you could take a nice road trip in a great cruising car and pick it up yourself.

What's the top end of the market for a plain Vanilla white P71 patrol car with no cruise control? This Fontana GovDeals auction might just find it.

2009 P71 29k miles, 97 idle hours

Open only to dealers and salvors because of Orange County's rules that any car with disabled rear doors cannot be sold to the public, the auction price is already at $5000 and it still has a week to go.

Granted, it's the lowest mileage/hours patrol car I've ever seen, but other than that this is a dime-a-dozen P71.

I've used Montway Auto Transport twice, once to ship me a P71 from Connecticut and once to ship my current P71 from Mesa, Arizona to me here in Central New York State.

The cross country job cost me $1300 and the car was here in about four days. The Connecticut car was like $450 and also took a few days.

I should note that Montway is more of a broker than a company that has it's own trucks and actually hauls cars (which is what I thought they were at first). What really happens is they take your shipping request and post it on a board and independent shippers bid on and take what they want. Montway says they do operate their own trucks but I have yet to talk to anyone who has seen it. Montway was by far the most affordable choice I could find, although I was a little disappointed when the price for my job went up by $50 a few days after I received my initial preliminary quote. Luckily, after speaking with the very polite representative, they agreed to honor my original quote, even though they didn’t have to. My advice to you is book your shipment on the day you get your quote to lock in that price, because apparently "routes" can change and prices for the same transport can fluctuate day-to-day.

That being said, they ended up jacking my price up anyway because I wasn't going to be around the day the shipper wanted to deliver the car, so they asked for another $50 to deliver it the next day. I agreed in the interest of expediency. Overall, the process was easy and went smoothly, and I couldn't have asked for much more. Their system works, it allows you to track your car and you have multiple payment options. I would recommend Montway to anyone based on my own personal experiences with them. The guy who brought my car from Arizona was super cool, had a huge semi-truck type car carrier and was totally professional.

Just my experience. For me, spending almost as much for the shipping as I did for the car was WELL worth it. Anyone on the east coast, as was said above, should be doing it the way I did it. This car is worth double what I paid for it here in NY just because of how rust free it is. When I go to sell this car (if I ever do), I will make back what I spent on shipping because the car is nicer than any Panther within 100 miles of me.

I posted it here more for anyone that was intrigued and wanted to potentially snag it, to go for it. I don't have the money for what that car will end up closing at.

There are, however, a couple plain white ex-patrols that are sitting VERY cheap, with a little over a week to go. I'm keeping my eye on them.

In my experience, Montway has been one of the worst for bait and switch pricing. They are, as you said, brokers not shippers. They give you a "quote", sign you up, then put out a shipping request out on the internet board and see who they can get to take it.

With one of my cars they quoted me $950, but after a week of looking they were floating my request on the boards for $1450 without updating me... with no takers. If they'd gotten a taker, they would have only advised me of the change in price after the car with in transit. So a buddy who was a shipper told me I had to literally tell Montway I was no longer going to ship the car and pull the contract because no other broker could touch it as long as they were holding the quote.

I did this and then my buddy instructed me on how I could use my free 150 mile radius Triple AAA tow to move the vehicle to a service shop along a major freeway, have a small bit of service done, and then the shop was obligated to hold the car until shipping pick-up. From that major freeway location the quote that my buddy shopped on the net was only $650 and we instantly had a taker.

On another note, I just sold car #10 for $4200 in less than 48 hours to the first person who looked at it. An early 20-something young man who had done a ton of internet research and who brought his dad. They couldn't find anything wrong with it, so they instantly bought it.

It's the Youtube stuff that is selling these cars for me. If you take care of the paint issues and the car has low mileage, it's a no brainer.

There's multiple ways to skin this cat, that's for sure. I've had good luck with Montway.

The AAA thing always seemed kind of shady to me. I've been tempted to try it but my conscience always gets the best of me.

Honestly, after having done this a couple times, I'd probably skip the brokers altogether next time and try to look locally for a shipper who would take a job from me direct. As far as finding the lowest price for a job though I think Montway is the way to go, just gotta pay attention to your shipment order that's all.

They've gone stupid prices around me as well. I just read an article from Steven Lang talking about last year's new cars & certified used cars are bringing more than 2021s sitting on the lot. Rental car agencies flooding auctions like CARMAX to BUY cars for their rental fleets.

Last deal I got on a CVPI was a 2003 with 105k miles from local online auction last summer. I do better on the mom & pop local online auction sites than I do the big ones like Govdeals.

The vanilla white P71 auction from Fontana that I mentioned above ran out of steam at $5650. So I guess there is a limit to what people will overpay for these cars. That auction was only open to dealers and salvors, so I hate to think what retail price they'll mark this one up to after paying over $6K with fees included.

The silver 2009 Sport with the paint damage on the hood and seat rips from Alachua County Florida did indeed go high. It sold for $5100 with only a 3% auction fee mark-up. This makes me optimistic about what I can get for my sport once I fix the roof rot issue.

Ugh, we've got a 2004 CVPI with 106k miles coming up for auction out of my department in a few weeks, hoping these prices settle somewhat by then because I'd like to bid on it, but not paying retail or above on it.