Customer Reviews

How to Buy Cars & Trucks, Vans & SUVs at Wholesale Prices From Government Auctions

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Here are the reasons why this book is disappointing:

1. The book is limited to GSA auctions in which government-owned vehicles are auctioned off. This is the rental fleet type of auction. The book does not cover government-seized and forfeited vehicles, which have a much greater variety in make/model and price, and which I think is the more interesting topic. GSA auctions are normally for practical American vehicles - no luxury, sport or foreign vehicles.

2. The book is too thin. It is mostly double-spaced, and is still under 100 pages! And a lot of it is fluff, e.g. several pages of screenshots of the GSA website.

3. A lot of the information is obvious or easily accessed elsewhere. A vehicle inspection checklist is included, but you can get this from any book or website about buying used cars. There's a "Bonus Tip" of how to get a free car - sounds good, right? In actuality, it's just a simple arithmetic exercise. The author says that if you buy 2 cars at $7000 and resell them for $11000 each, you profit $8000, which he then points out is enough to buy a third auction car "for free"! Duh.

To be fair, there is some useful information about how the auctions are conducted, and what the author's experiences and advice are - but this material is maybe 20% of the book at most. Also, note that the author self-rated this book "5 stars" which inflated the average rating. I wouldn't recommend this book unless you can get it for a couple bucks used.