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As
some of you may now be aware, I recently made an addition to my vehicular stable. Please, please, hold
your comments and keep your seats. Yes I actually spent money on something, and no of course I couldn’t
just limit myself to a pithy ‘blog post on this momentous occasion. Nay, I shall verily harangue
my dear readers with slightly fabricated drama, dubious wit, and modest hyperbole until my gnarled hands wither
in the throes of advanced carpal tunnel. Ok, it won’t be that bad, but bear with me for a moment…I’m
having fun with this.
Allow me to digress for a moment in order to set the proper stage for the soon-to-be chronicled events.
For the average consumer, a car purchase might begin with a gestation period of three months or less.
That provides enough time to first decide a new car might be nice, read a few things, go on a few test drives, arrange
financing, and then go and spend all 
of a Saturday haggling with some douche in a toupee and coffee-stained tie before driving home with a brand new vehicle replete
with cup-holders and extended warranty. Suffice to say that this particular transaction proved somewhat
more adventurous than a trip down to CarMax. As with most things car-related, I could never brook such
morbid simplicity…oh no.
I started seriously researching about three years ago. To translate a bit for the non OCD among you, that means that I began tracking e-bay sales, and cross-referencing them to asking prices on Autotrader, Cars.com, and the club forum’s classified section in order to get a handle on the market. I also began trolling various Internet forums and reading every magazine review possible to get a handle on any potential pit-falls. As my savings began to approach the level at which I could actually make a move, I finally found a dealership car close enough to test drive. As a side note, I refuse to “joy ride” private owners, but I have no compunctions about test driving a car at a dealership with no intention of making a purchase. After an hour or so cruising (quite responsibly) around the back roads of Marietta, Georgia, I found myself seriously hooked. (A more thorough account of this particular goings-on is available HERE ) A year of window-shopping, internet browsing, and Gran Turismo later, my trusty MR2 forces my hand when it regurgitates its water pump in the middle of an intersection on the way to work. A few Autotrader scam ads and two Craigslist non-responses later, I finally find a live owner who has a car on E-Bay.
The intrigue starts here.
The owner comes across as very accommodating, but also quite ignorant of the car’s intricacies. To
put it bluntly, he didn’t know his ass from a hole-in-the-ground when it came to anything mechanical. I
managed to talk him through finding a transmission serial number so I could see if the car might potentially have a defective
transmission case, but that was about as much as he could manage. He did put me in touch with both the
dealership where the car had been serviced for most of its life, as well as a private mechanic. From the
information I garnered from these sources, I could tell the car would need a little work, but it sounded solid.
I decided I could afford to bid the reserve on the auction and then travel to inspect the car and close the deal.
Apparently my E-Bay account had other ideas as it froze on me with a minute left and I was outbid by a dealership in
California for a car in up-state New York.
At this point, I really needed a car so I began pouring through craigslist and autotrader for some alternatives. I actually test drove an S2000 and really liked it. So much, in fact, that I was minutes away from calling on a local ad for one of the drop-top Hondas when I got a call from our friend in New York. I had made him aware of my bidding problem, and after wishing him luck with the sale, had requested to be contacted if anything fell through. Well, it had. The dealer in CA had gotten cold feet due to the high mileage on the car. So, pulling myself away from the Honda ads, I quickly affirmed my interest and made travel arrangements. Worst case, I would be out about $700 in plane tickets if the car sucked and I had to walk away.
At this point I should remind those who know me, and introduce those who don’t to my typical luck with air travel.
I had booked an arrival time in White Plains, NY for 10:20 am. Enough time to take an hour or two
inspecting the car, and leave in time to drive it the 12.5 hours back to Tennessee and still make it by midnight or shortly
thereafter. I got to the stopover in Philly just fine, only 15 minutes late. No problem
right? Wrong! It would not have been a problem except that the connecting flight left 10 minutes EARLY. Never in the history of air travel, have
I ever heard of a flight leaving early. I called my father, a seasoned traveler, to confirm that was the
case and I quote him as he was looking it up on the airline’s web site: “I’ve never heard of that, it would
be really unusua….well, sure enough, they left early…”. I had suspected as much upon discovering
that an employee of the airline numbered among the small group stranded by the early departure. So after some
ado I made it to NY by way of Washington D.C. and met the seller at about 1pm.
I won’t go into too much detail about
the inspection, but I found the car a little worse off than expected. In addition to some weird paint blemishes
(ascertained to be cat-related), the car had been rolled into a curb and the paint was bubbling on the front bumper cover,
the check-engine light was flashing four (4) different codes which TJ helped me identify on the phone, and the seller disclosed
that the AC didn’t even sort-of work, like the ad implied. This resulted in one of the more surreal
moments of the whole ordeal. There I am sitting in this guy’s kitchen, eating a sandwich he has just
offered me, while I tell him why I am not going to pay him the agreed-upon amount for the car that he drove on his first date
with his now-wife. Apparently, I have no shame. So, some time, and some tricky negotiating later, we both
felt at least semi-comfortable with new terms.
Papers signed, money exchanged, and keys turned over, I set off towards Knoxville at about 3pm eastern on Sunday, October 5th 2008. At the seller’s recommendation, I set off south on a road he assured me would take me to the Jersey Turnpike and cut an hour off of my planned return route. I began to rue this decision about the time I realized that I was in the middle of the Bronx in an expensive-looking car that I knew nothing about and could possibly break at any moment. I continued ruing this decision as I crossed the George Washington bridge into New Jersey while surrounded by yankee a-holes and driving on the worst-maintained roads that I have ever seen. I rued my decision particularly hard when I found myself stuck in game-day traffic in the middle of New Jersey and on a toll road to boot…I was paying the state of NJ to be stuck in traffic on a shit road, awesome…
About two hours later, I
decided I had rued enough and stopped at a services exit and consulted a map with the aim of finding the quickest way out
of this most accursed northern state. A short three exits later, I slid onto the more expensive, but far
less treacherous Pennsylvania turnpike. It was now about 6pm, and I was still an hour from turning south
at Harrisburg. I stopped and checked the oil, tire pressures, lights, and top off with gas.
All items passed inspection, so I set off again. I turned south, and onto an interstate that I am
comfortably familiar with, at about 7:30pm. I was still feeling pretty fresh at this point and had designs
of rolling into Knoxville at 3am, crashing for a few hours and then rolling into work like nothing happened on Monday, so
I got up on the wheel and hammered on into the night.
Somewhere in the middle of Virginia, I changed my mind. I was still alert, but the ordeal of getting
out of NY/NJ had sapped my reserves. It would have been cool to say that I iron-manned 12 hours back from
New York, but the risk of continuing just wasn’t worth it. I was yawning repeatedly when I decided to call it a strong
attempt and lay up for the night at a familiar haunt in Harrisonburg. I completed the final five-hour stint
without much incident the next morning, trying to familiarize myself with the car as much as possible, and killing some time
doing useful things like phoning the insurance company to add the car to my policy. Arriving in Knoxville
around 2pm, I proceeded straight to the DMV to register the car and then on to the Acura dealership to order a few parts that
I already knew I would need.
Fast-forward two weeks. I have now cleared all of the engine codes, replaced an oil pan gasket, re-sealed
a leaky windshield, and removed all of the cat-urine stains and paw-prints from the hood and deck. I am
about two valve cover gaskets, and some minor cosmetic items from being the satisfied owner of a 213,000 mile 1992 Acura NSX.
Minor, correctable issues aside, the car is damn fun to drive even though I have been grannying it around since it
is my only car until I can take the MR2 apart and put it back together.
So watch this space, as well as the ‘blog for updates on both cars’ progress.