Craiglist Literary Find: ...you get burned

Today, we travel to majestic New Mexico to look at a clapped-out 1971 Buick Skylark:

1971 skylark parts buick 350 4 barrel - $800 (Ruidoso NM)

for sale is a good parts car if you are restoring a chevelle skylark gto or ?? it has the 350 buick motor with the distributor in the front (not small block chevy) the motor is factory 4 barrel carb, factory ac it seems to run good and the trans pulls the car had a fire in the cab from a kid playing with matches. it still has many good parts on it some of the goodies have been removed as i was planning to make it a dirt track race car. it is in Ruidoso call 575 three seven eight XXXX


I WILL SELL SOME PARTS OFF OF THE CAR CALL OR EMAIL WITH REQUESTS.

I AM ASKING 800.00 CASH OR TRADE for the whole car. NO SCAMMERS
DO NOT WASTE MY TIME OR YOURS WITH SPAM, GIMMICKS, OR GET RICH QUICK SCAMS.



All-in all, this seems a pretty pedestrian Craigslist ad. The poster wrote it in a typical mix of all lower case with no punctuation and ALL CAPS FOR THE PARTS THAT HE OR SHE WANTS TO EMPHASIZE. One might find the incidental lower-case of "for the whole car" interesting, but it's clear that this seller creates many classified ads and includes that all-caps part in all of them but edited the bit about "for the whole car."

The best part, well, the seller buried it in the middle of this ad where he or she lists the features of the car. Can you spot it?

Let's see...350 Buick motor, four-barrel carburetor, factory air-conditioning...sounds good so far...the trans pulls...OK, I'm not really sure what that means, but that's nothing new on Craigslist..."the car had a fire in the cab from a kid playing with matches." Ah, there it is.

The ad is oddly specific about the fire. Whereas most sellers would simply say "interior fire but mechanicals OK" or something along those lines, this Craigslister has assigned the blame but has cleverly left out any information about the kid. And that's a shame because we'd like to know more about the fire. Whose kid was it? Was it pesky neighborhood kids getting retribution because the seller (or previous owner) had taken their baseball? Is the seller's child Ralph Wiggum?

Simply put, we love it when Craigslist ads create more questions than they answer.