Buddy of mine bought a Z, think last owner tried to total it

[Guest HolyLlama]

A buddy of mine called up up today said he saw a 300zx in a neighbouring town and asked me to look at it, I went and looked at it called him back 30 minutes later said it looked great for 800 bucks. He calls me back 30 minutes later and asks me if he can use my lift to change the oil on it, he just bought it. He arrived at the shop with a big grin in his new Z. He said "you always told me how fast these things would go, but I never thought they were this fast."

 

It's an 85 300ZX turbo. It looks like it was taken good care of until a few months ago. It has a super clean interior, 50,000 miles on it, no cracks in the dash, t-tops don't leak and all the weatherstripping looks new, spare tire & kit is still there and where it's supposed to be, and it's the only Z I've ever seen with no rust in the spare tire well, the only thing wrong in the interior is the radio has been pulled out.

 

The exterior is great, the bumper paint is spider webbing but the metal paint is great, it hasn't oxidized at all, looks fresh, and it doesn't appear to be repainted. There are no dents at all on the car except for a very curious dent in the driver's side quarter panel. The car was obviously sideswiped. A small crease runs from the middle of the driver's door to the tire well. Even though I'm nowhere near as experienced with bondo as a person in a bodyshop, I figure it would have taken me an hour or so to get it straight. Here's the odd part, there are four deep round dents in the quarter panel. The crease runs straight through it, doesn't get deeper or shallower. There's only one place in that line on the quarter panel that doesn't have the crease running through it. It's a very nast dent. The metal bends towards the front of the car, it actually goes behind the lip of the door skin, it is creased but deeper and at a different angle than the whole crease, this dent is maybe an in square and right after it, the metal actually is volcanoed towards the outside of the car. What's fishy about this is from the was the metal bent at the tire well, whatever hit the car was headed towards the rear of the car unlike the dent that goes behind the door; the door was not damaged by that dent, although it runs behind the lip of the doorskin; there's about a 3 inch square piece of bare metal at that dent that hasn't rusted yet, although the crease has spots of surface rust starting to form; and a baseball bat I placed against the 4 round dents along the crease fit each eerily well. I've heard of people complaining to the insurance company until they got their car totalled, but this is the first time I've suspected someone to take an active role in getting in a car totalled. We don't know if it has a salvage title or not, he didn't get a title because Georgia doesn't require one for that year. I told him he bought a great car. If it only had that crease instead of the dents, it would be extremely easy to fix. Sorry if I made any typos or didn't explain anything well enough, it's almost 3:00am and I should've been asleep a long time ago.