Am I the only one who thinks this isn't right?

[The Warden]

Some of this is asking an opinion, some of this is venting, so please bear with me.

A friend and I have gone up to Berkeley twice over the past couple of weeks, carefully inspecting an '83 240D that my friend really wanted to buy. This is about a half hour one-way drive in the best of circumstances, and with traffic, the driving time was at least doubled.

The car checked out mechanically, and my friend was actually willing to give the seller the $$ last week to buy the car, but the seller said that he had to speak with his father first. At this time, the seller said that he would definitely sell the car to my friend, and that he could pick it up on the evening of the next Thursday (today).

So, my friend's mom got an E-mail from the seller this morning saying that he had spoken with his father, and that they decided not to sell the car, because "they could find another use for it within the family".

On the one hand, I can understand the seller's sentiment; from the beginning, he had said that he wished he could keep the car and whatnot. However, it seems to me that he should have spoken with his father about this before putting the car up for sale in the first place. I know that a verbal contract is as good as the paper it's written on, but it still doesn't seem like the honorable thing to do by any stretch of the imagination, especially since the seller knew how badly my friend wanted this car and that he was already buying things in preparation for receiving the car, since he had been promised the car.

Okay, done venting...again, I know that the seller has the right to do what he did, but it just doesn't seem right to me. Am I weird for thinking this?