Flipping an ‘Unsellable’ Chevrolet C10 Pick-up in Less than Five Hours
C10 was on the market for two years. Then a Chevy enthusiast bought it, fixed its major flaw, and unloaded it with ease.
Every car enthusiast has his or her own quirky preferences. Some only buy American. Others only drive cars with manual transmissions. Then there are those who go for odd colors. In a recent VINwiki video, auto enthusiast Rob Pitts, who’s been buying and selling Chevrolet C10 trucks for decades, says, “I like problem child vehicles. And I love selling things that other people can’t.” One particular C10 he picked up ticked both boxes for him.
One day, one of Pitts’s friends called him up and told him about a C10 he was having trouble selling. It was a sky blue short-bed with a top-notch paint job that simulated years of weathering and surface rust. It had a small-block Chevy V8 under the hood and a set of cool mag wheels. But Pitts’ pal had been trying to get rid of it for two years with no luck.
After getting a look at the truck, Pitts knew why nobody had scooped it up. The shop that built and painted the truck put its name and logo on the doors. As Pitts puts it, “Nobody wants to marry a girl with some other guy’s name tattooed on their back.”
Those giant blemishes ended up saving Pitts a lot of money. He bought the troubled C10 for a song. According to him, “You couldn’t even remotely build this truck for what I paid for it.” Then he promptly looked into how to erase the deal-breaking signatures so he could make some money off of his purchase.
You don’t sell as many C10s as Pitts does without making valuable connections. He happened to have another friend who was a masterful automotive painter so Pitts gave him the delicate job. “Sure enough, it’s like it was never there. He blended all the patina … airbrushed everything back. This guy knocked it out of the park.”
On his way back from the body shop, Pitts stopped off in a church parking lot (because sometimes you need the Lord’s help to sell a vehicle) to shoot some pics of his next sale. He posted them on a few sites. Within five hours, he had two potential buyers on their way to see it in person. Both of them — a restaurateur and a husband and wife couple — showed up at the same time. The Mr. and Mrs. offered Pitts his full asking price and ended up permanently adopting his problem-child vehicle.
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