tmdavila
03-22-2011, 12:35 PM
Months of gut-wrenching and truly feminine indecision....E46 or E90? M3 or ZHP? ZHP or 335? Alpine White, Interlagos Blue or CarbonSchwartz Black? Imola Red? NO, that would be a ticket magnet with my competitive driving addiction. ARGHH!! Gas prices and dislike of the E90 styling, plus my preference for a "driver's experience" (vs. a "cushy" BMW experience) and overall value kept driving me back to the ZHP as the best and best-looking of all worlds.
Saturday night, while on a weekend girls trip to FL, I was doing yet another late-night idle-time search of all possible websites for the "perfect" AW ZHP coupe....once again, find 98% gray or black ZHPs and no elusive alpine white or mystic blue. And, like usual, convertible upon convertible stared back at me. Nothing against convertibles, I like 'em and have 2; a purple '84 CJ-7 and a gorgeous fully-customized 685 RWHP 2000 Saleen S-281 Speedster with a supercharged 393 crate motor. They're great fun, but for my DD I needed the flexibility of having a roof with a hole in it for this chilly northern climate.
SUDDENLY, I SAW HER - at a Toyota dealership in Delaware!!!! Hmmmm...she was on Cars.com and also on the dealer's website, might that indicate that she really WAS still for sale?
I don't know the NE well, nor Delaware from Maryland, but when I told my friend where I'd found my car the night before, she said, "hey, that's only an hour from my house, so you can fly home with me and I can drive you to the dealership!" I quickly found and booked a one-way ticket hoping that car WAS still on the lot but keeping my booking for my return flight home to Wisconsin "just in case".
At 8:20 am Monday I was going through Security at the airport with 2 boarding passes in hand...and the dealer wasn't open yet. It was killing me! Thank goodness they picked up the phone 10 mins early and the receptionist double-checked that my baby hadn't been sold - first hurdle down.
BUT, the sales mgr wasn't in.... He called me at 9, and with 30 minutes 'til boarding I suggested we cut a deal fast because I had to choose which plane I was getting on pretty quickly. I tossed out a number, he went off to check the pricing and on the next phone call we settled on my "target" price, with them moving down more than I moved up. (My "target" was no more than $21k out the door).
She's loaded with exactly everything I wanted other than the sand interior... and only 16K miles. That's right, 1-6-3-0-0 miles. After driving her home the odometer now shows 17,200 miles.
My "new" ZHP and I left the dealer last night at 5 pm EDT and made it home to SE Wisconsin at 4:30 am CDT. Quite unfortunately, I had left my cord for my radar detector in the rental car in Ft Lauderdale, so I had to keep it at about 80 for most of the way, tho' I slipped north of 90 several times when I was kind of losing track of things there in the lonely dark interstate of Ohio and Indiana at 3 am-ish (or was that "3 Amish"?).
She of course, handled everything that 900 miles of road could throw at her flawlessly, including storms, huge puddles and TERRIBLY rutted and potholed road construction areas on the famed and scenic Chicago "Skyway" down in the 'hood, with dark, zig-zagging narrow lanes delineated by what looked like white-out tape and semis just waiting a few feet away for us to hydroplane into them.
I got home, kissed the ZHP, then the dogs, patted the cats and my sleeping hubby and got a quick but very refreshing 1.5 hour nap.
She looks great, the windows are already tinted dark so first on the mods list will be some chrome ZHP or CSL staggered rims for summer.
Seeing her next to my trusty DD, a still very sharp AW '98 323IS w/110K mi. makes me more than a little sad, but I know I'll find a good home for her.
I'll send pics when the snow quits flying up here and I've got the new rims on!
Teresa
Saturday night, while on a weekend girls trip to FL, I was doing yet another late-night idle-time search of all possible websites for the "perfect" AW ZHP coupe....once again, find 98% gray or black ZHPs and no elusive alpine white or mystic blue. And, like usual, convertible upon convertible stared back at me. Nothing against convertibles, I like 'em and have 2; a purple '84 CJ-7 and a gorgeous fully-customized 685 RWHP 2000 Saleen S-281 Speedster with a supercharged 393 crate motor. They're great fun, but for my DD I needed the flexibility of having a roof with a hole in it for this chilly northern climate.
SUDDENLY, I SAW HER - at a Toyota dealership in Delaware!!!! Hmmmm...she was on Cars.com and also on the dealer's website, might that indicate that she really WAS still for sale?
I don't know the NE well, nor Delaware from Maryland, but when I told my friend where I'd found my car the night before, she said, "hey, that's only an hour from my house, so you can fly home with me and I can drive you to the dealership!" I quickly found and booked a one-way ticket hoping that car WAS still on the lot but keeping my booking for my return flight home to Wisconsin "just in case".
At 8:20 am Monday I was going through Security at the airport with 2 boarding passes in hand...and the dealer wasn't open yet. It was killing me! Thank goodness they picked up the phone 10 mins early and the receptionist double-checked that my baby hadn't been sold - first hurdle down.
BUT, the sales mgr wasn't in.... He called me at 9, and with 30 minutes 'til boarding I suggested we cut a deal fast because I had to choose which plane I was getting on pretty quickly. I tossed out a number, he went off to check the pricing and on the next phone call we settled on my "target" price, with them moving down more than I moved up. (My "target" was no more than $21k out the door).
She's loaded with exactly everything I wanted other than the sand interior... and only 16K miles. That's right, 1-6-3-0-0 miles. After driving her home the odometer now shows 17,200 miles.
My "new" ZHP and I left the dealer last night at 5 pm EDT and made it home to SE Wisconsin at 4:30 am CDT. Quite unfortunately, I had left my cord for my radar detector in the rental car in Ft Lauderdale, so I had to keep it at about 80 for most of the way, tho' I slipped north of 90 several times when I was kind of losing track of things there in the lonely dark interstate of Ohio and Indiana at 3 am-ish (or was that "3 Amish"?).
She of course, handled everything that 900 miles of road could throw at her flawlessly, including storms, huge puddles and TERRIBLY rutted and potholed road construction areas on the famed and scenic Chicago "Skyway" down in the 'hood, with dark, zig-zagging narrow lanes delineated by what looked like white-out tape and semis just waiting a few feet away for us to hydroplane into them.
I got home, kissed the ZHP, then the dogs, patted the cats and my sleeping hubby and got a quick but very refreshing 1.5 hour nap.
She looks great, the windows are already tinted dark so first on the mods list will be some chrome ZHP or CSL staggered rims for summer.
Seeing her next to my trusty DD, a still very sharp AW '98 323IS w/110K mi. makes me more than a little sad, but I know I'll find a good home for her.
I'll send pics when the snow quits flying up here and I've got the new rims on!
Teresa