Honoring My Father By Swapping A $100 SUV

Like a lot of surprises in life, this all started with some spare cash floating around in my pocket and a few too many drinks.

I was up well past midnight and in front of my computer.  Surfing had turned into browsing. Browsing had turned into shopping, and pretty soon I was looking with rose-colored glasses at a bunch of old government cars that had either been seized, smashed up, or mothballed.

There was one in particular that caught my eye.

This 1994 Ford Explorer that seemed to have more dirt on it than paint. The description from the City of Roswell didn’t help matters.

1994 FORD EXPLORER WHITE WITH GRAY INTERIOR, 4.0 L V-6 AUTOMATIC, AC, MINOR SCRATCHES AND DENTS ON EXTERIOR, NO CRACKED GLASS, DEAD BATTERY, DRY ROTTED TIRES, NEEDS SHOCKS, NO KEYS

A lot of room for the imagination about the Explorer’s true condition turned into one dangerous thought, “There is something nice about this one!"

I’m not much for SUVs, but the terms and restrictions for the sale made it look like an easy score. No current bids. Only a $100 opening, and a big barrier to entry: no public bidders. Dealers and junkyards only. You can blame this restriction on our country’s sordid emissions issues which make a lot of these older cars virtually unsellable to the public in certain metropolitan areas.

I was too drunk to say no and, besides, I needed a cheap fantasy that would spare me a major financial hangover. I made my bid, watched a dinosaur from the movie “Jurassic Park” rip apart one of those Explorers on YouTube, and went to bed.

I woke up the next morning to this: "Congratulations, Steven Lang! You are the high bidder.”

I had to read that three times to internalize the fact that I now owned a 20-year-old SUV with no keys. That was the bad news. The good news turned out to be far more plentiful: The Explorer had no rust thanks to the temperate Atlanta climate. The entire interior was clean enough for it to almost look like new, and it had only 93,463 original miles.

What to do?

As a long-time auctioneer and car dealer, the answer to this question was always easy: Fix it, sell it and buy something else. I had done this thousands of times. But this time I wanted to do something different. I wanted to see how far that $100 could go.

After a lot of soul searching, I decided to make this a charitable pursuit in honor of my late father, Kurt Lang. He was a remarkable man who not only survived the Holocaust (although his parents did not), but also had the rare privilege of testifying against the Nazis in his rural town. My father was one of the fortunate few to see justice prevail.  Before beginning a new life in America, he also defended many of those who were wrongly accused in his community of being Nazi sympathizers.

He had done the right thing in life, and I wanted to honor his legacy. Armies give out medals. Politicians get buildings and airports named after them. I would sell a few cars.

The Explorer was given a new battery, an oil change, a thorough detailing, and sold for $2,000. That money was then used to buy a 1999 Ford Ranger.

That truck sold for $3,000. From there I decided to get a little creative by buying two vehicles at one sale: a 2000 Ford F-150 and a 1999 Mercury Cougar.

Those sold for $2,000 apiece. I was on a roll! Another car… Why not? I was beginning to feel like I was at a casino — and you know what happens when that feeling sets in.

I bought the next car right, $3,000 for a 2006 Chrysler PT Cruiser with about 110,000 miles. The problem was I sold it to the wrong people; I agreed to take a deposit and get the remainder in two weeks. A couple weeks turned into a couple of months and an endless list of excuses. By May I finally got my $4,000 and decided to do one more gambit.

This time it was an ‘07 PT Cruiser convertible with only 75k miles and a gold 1999 Dodge Intrepid. The Cruiser cost me $3,700, while the Intrepid was an inoperable vehicle that I bought for all of $300.

The Intrepid had a loose starter that just needed tightening, while the Cruiser needed nothing but a good owner. I found a nice older woman in Michigan who bought it for $5,000.

The Intrepid didn’t have as good of a fate. I was going to run through an auction and sell it for around $1,300. But then the rear got smashed all to hell and the car got totaled out. Manheim Auctions, the go-to wholesaler for such machines, cut me a check for $1,300 with no fees.

My swapping of a $100 SUV had brought in $6,300, minus a little over $1,300 in repair cost and auction fees, leaving me with just under $5,000. Not a bad chunk of change. I decided to round up the net proceeds to that nice $5,000 sum and invest in a good charity.

At first I was going to donate the entire proceeds to an organization called Helping Hands, a charity in rural Georgia that provides food and other assistance for those in need. But then fate intervened.

My 11-year-old son started having severe digestive issues and was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. The idea of memorializing my father had to be balanced with the needs of his grandson and many other young children like him. I decided to donate the money to the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America along with Helping Hands.

I think I made the right decision. As I type these words, I can’t help but get a strange flashback of when my Dad and I would end a phone conversation during the twilight years of his life. He would always tell me, “Give my love to everyone… and I’m proud of you!"

That compliment was always worth more to me than any other. When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, that ending changed. He would tell me, "Give my love to everyone… and thanks for everything!"

And now that my hands are trembling, and I can’t help but pause every few words, that’s the exact message I would like to give to my grandparents who I never met, my late brother, and most of all, my Dad.

Give my love to everyone, and thanks for everything.