Saw a diesel Mercury Lynx (Escort) on Ebay
 

Not mine, but I saw this and thought someone here might be interested in it.

Diesel hatchback, 5 speed manual. You can probably hypermile the heck out of it.

-Jay

1984 Mercury Lynx diesel

wonder what the reserve price is?

check this out tho:

https://orlando.craigslist.org/cto/855492550.html

That Lynx is disgusting and overpriced. Seriously, the owner hasn't even bothered to clean the grime off the steering wheel. I can scarcely imagine how bad it probably smells.

I have to agree with Snax here...as someone who has sold a fair amount on eBay (but no cars, at least not yet), I know that the value of a picture cannot be over estimated. The auction has ended with a bid of just over a grand...I suspect that with a good scrub job, even with the rust (which scares Californians like me) he could have gotten a much higher bid.

Personally, I like to find a scrungy looking car like that and pay bottom dollar, then scrub the hell out of it...usually it'll come out just fine.

My father used to work with a guy who on the side would find cars like that, clean them up, and resell them for significantly more. Clean sells. It's why I paid $1700 for an 83 Tercel with 200,000 miles on it. I've still had to do my share of maintenance on it, but it's not something that I am embarassed to have people ride in. I wouldn't even get into that Lynx unless I were flat out stranded somewhere.

LOL, yes, that car is pretty ugly. From looking at car ads it appears that everyone selling diesels is selling them "ready to run on biodiesel, or convert to WVO" I agree that he should have cleaned it up some more. I'm seriously considering a diesel wagon as an extra vehicle. I've seen a couple of Volvo and Mercedes wagons with manual transmissions. The problem is that somehow I'm not thinking that a diesel 240 Volvo wagon with a manual transmission and surface rust is worth $5,000. If I can find one for $1,000 we might have something there.

I wonder what his reserve was, but the auction says that the reserve had been lowered.

-Jay

The (emphasis added) above is the reason for the below...

There is a 240 wagon MT, Diesel on the DC craigslist, but its in really rough shape and they want almost $2,000 for it. I saw another in almost pristine condition with a WVO conversion for like $8,000 or $9,000 in Washington state I think. I'm not paying that much, I just want something cheap to go back & forth to the flea markets on weekends. $8,000 can buy a lot of gas for The Beast. I know GM built diesel wagons in the 70's and 80's but as I remember a lot of people I knew who had them replaced the diesel engines with gasoline engines when the price of gas fell to below $1.00/gal. I have yet to find a GM diesel wagon on craigslist. (plus, the GM wagons would be all automatics - I would like a manual tranny.)

-Jay

The history of those GM diesels, as I've learned, is that they were a hastily converted gas engine design and were prone to premature death. Even if you could find one, I'd suggest not getting it.

Here's an interesting car... and a lot nicer than the hatchback...

https://baltimore.craigslist.org/cto/831725815.html