The Land Rover Sold! But There Is A Big Problem. We Did NOT Sell It!

Once we purchased our Eco Sport, the Land Rover became our second string vehicle.  It ate a lot of fuel and it was at a point where it always needed something repaired including over $1,000 USD to get the front end rebuilt.  There was a list of other problems as well.  In other words, to fix it up would cost a whole lot more than it was worth.  So what do we do?  We could continue to let it deteriorate parked in front of our house.  We could also take to the border and sell it up in Tuscon, Arizona but the cost of getting it road trip worthy, fuel costs and other expenses made it clear it was not the best choice.  Now what do we do?  Though we loved our Land Rover and had been good us, we had a truck that just needed to go away.

Our hopes were answered when the father of one of Traces's good buddies at school heard we wanted to get rid of it.  He also had a Land Rover of the same model and similar year and he was looking for affordable parts to use.  Perfect!!  The deal was for $2,000 USD.   It just so happened that he was a furniture maker.  Even better!  We had just moved into a new house and needed some things like tables, dressers etc that were surely needed in the partially furnished home we rented.  He would partially pay off the truck with custom furniture and the remainder with cash and in the end all responsibility for the vehicle would be his.  What a great solution!

Getting ready to cross the border in September 2011

We put our furniture order in and he began to work on it when his Land Rover broke down and needed parts.  Being a decent guy, knowing he was in a jamb and understanding that without a truck he wouldn't be able to produce our furniture nearly as fast, I gave him the keys to the truck to begin using it for parts.  Our boys continued to play together and I would see him or his wife at school almost everyday.  We received two great tables and we were happy so far.  All good.

One day I saw on his Facebook Page that he had dislocated his shoulder surfing and only his apprentice had been working on furniture orders.  Why our remaining order was taking so long was now clear. Hopefully, in a few weeks he would be out of this sling and working again and eventually he would get back to work.

This hope instantly vanished a few weeks later speaking to another parent from school when he just casually mentioning that he and his family were headed out my furniture maker's "going away party"?  Going away?  WTF!?!?!?  By this time, he had only partially fulfilled his furniture order and had provided NO cash.  I immediately called him and his phone had been disconnected.  Fcking great!  I headed out to San Pancho to see if I could find him at home but the place he was living was dark.  I did find his workshop a few doors down and saw our sad Land Rover partially dismantled sitting there in the dark.

Just as I was about to leave fuming, when he and his family came around the corner to find me in front of their house.  His pregnant wife, his boy, his baby all piled out of their now perfectly running Land Rover and I settled in for an explanation.  This had better be good right?  Amid frequent apologies he told me of how he was unable to keep up with orders and bills during the time he was injured.  He had a baby coming in a few months and when an offer came to leave and stay with family in Argentina they were quick to take it.  The offer came in and they decided to leave within three days leaving some people in the dark, including some they owed a good chunk of money to.  He assured me that the Land Rover, in it's current dismantled condition, would be fine where it was and they had hoped to come back to San Pancho in a few months once the baby was born and they were back on their feet.  Paying back money owed along the way.  I sat there in the dark with them apologizing, his wife crying her eyes out with no real solutions.  Only promises.  It wasn't like I could just demand my money or even take our truck since it could no longer run.  They were in a bad spot. We enjoyed hanging out with them and having their son over to play with Trace.  He was a Brit and she was from Argentina.  Nice people.  All I could was drive off and hope that all their hopes and promises became reality someday soon after they got things sorted out.

Loading up the Land Rover almost four years ago.

...but it does not end there.

A few months after this family left,  I was again visiting with a parent from school who knew of our Land Rover fiasco.  He knew our story.  Our Land Rover was dead, dissected and left to rot under a tree in a back yard in San Pancho...or so we thought.  This parent told me he had seen our truck on the side of the road in a new location in town.  What?  It moved?  Who did it and why?  It was supposed to stay where it was.  The landlord of the house where the truck was had it moved near the house where he currentlylived and there it sat on the side of the road.  I can understand that if the landlord needed it removed for renting the house he needed to put it someplace but now our sad truck was now in full public view, collecting dust and appeared abandon.  This was not fair to the neighbors or to the very tidy pueblo of San Pancho so Ashley and I discussed having it towed to my shop location that had large lot we could store it on.  The problem was the question of what promises our furniture maker may have made to the landlord if any.  Did he"give" the Land Rover to the landlord for payment of back rent?  Did the landlord think the truck abandoned and felt he had a right to the vehicle.  We still had the title and the car keys but felt like we just couldn't yank it off the street without speaking with this guy first to find out more.  Yes, we still owned the truck but we wanted to do this delicately considering what discussions may have taken place without our knowledge.

We enlisted the same parent from school to help us out since he knew the truck story and also knew the landlord who was in possession of the truck.  As we prepared to contact the landlord we got word that the truck was no longer on the street where it had been.  Had it been towed?  Was someone driving it?   Where the hell was it?  Our names were still legally associated with the truck if anything happened.  Not a good situation to be in.  Turns out another family had it who lived across town.  So, we went to look and sure enough it was where we were told it was except it looked like someone was actually taking care of it now.  It no longer had an abandoned car look with headlights missing, front grill broken and months of debris built up on the hood...it looked... LOVED.

...but it does not end there.

With my friend in tow to translate we visited the family who now apparently now had "ownership" of the truck.  It turns out that the landlord who moved the truck totally overhauled the vehicle replacing missing or non-working parts, cleaned the thing up, got it running and sold it.  Yes, SOLD IT!?!  He sold it for cash and a golf cart trade.  Much better deal than we had struck many months earlier.  We made sure that this family knew we were NOT looking to reclaim the vehicle at this point or demand payment.  We also did not want to deal with the landlord who sold it to them in the first place.  He may have felt he "owned" the truck based on this discussions with the furniture maker and had every right to sell it in some Mexico way.  If there was going to be any discussion concerning the sale of the truck it was going to be between the landlord and this family on their own terms without us in the middle.  We just want to start the process to legally hand over the truck to this new family and remove our names from the vehicle and any responsibilities that we had to it.  We would take the loss, not cause any ill will or conflict.  We felt that was the only way to handle it at this point.

It turns out that this family was very happy that I had made the effort to stop by and did not want to cause any problems.  They wanted to legally import the vehicle into Mexico but the title, which we still had, would make the process much easier.  They have connections in the motor vehicles department who would help them get the process done.  The process is close to being complete now and hopefully soon the Land Rover will continue to live on with a new family and we will see it drive by once in a while.

...and that's the end of the story...we think...we hope.