The only thing I notice that I don’t really like about the car (other than it’s sticker price, though it does sound reasonable for what you get) is that it shows it with a “Hybrid Synergy Drive” which if I’m not mistaken is Toyota’s take on CVT. Personally I find it hard to buy something quick that doesn’t have a stick shift…

I haven’t much touched the car since I bought it other than typical old car maintenance items (for the most part, I like doing all of my own work), so I’ll be kind of interested to see the comments it generates on it’s current state. Sometimes I want to leave it alone, other times I’m ready to do a few minor things to it.

For a little more about Autoblog, as far as I know it’s one of the most popular blogs about cars out there (each entry seems to generate tons of comments) and most gearheads who are also interweb nerds seem to read it. As for me, I’ve loved cars as long as I can remember and have owned at least two at a time for the past 8 years or so.

To give you an idea about how fast this is, I have never heard of anything faster which is still able to be driven on the street, and in fact this car would make most “trailer queens” at the track look silly. A 10 second street car is rare, 9 second track only “door slammer” at an amateur level is almost unheard of, and by comparison 7 seconds just insane by someone without any major sponsorship, etc, much less it being still able to drive on the street.

Anyhow, here are some photos I took of some sort of test mule SUV. I can’t really tell what it is… some sort of Range Rover or Land Rover I’d say?

If for some reason you’d like the rights to publish these (I have the originals of course), feel free to contact me to discuss.

I wonder if they will offer some sort of Eleanor package too? Yum.

I’ve been pretty OCD about researching cars in the past few months, and this car seems to be just about the right fit for what I was looking for. I was actually mostly researching for the future as I planned on maybe upgrading next summer, however I called in to see what the balance was on the Accord, and I pretty much immediately knew the pay-off vs. it’s trade-in value were pretty close together, so I started putting the plan into motion a bit early.

I wanted something quick that had room (but nothing too big), not something you see everywhere, and something slightly more luxurious than my current beater, a ’97 Accord, without getting something pompous or very expensive. After narrowing down the candidates, cringing at sticker prices and/or resale values of most of the cars on my list, I decided I wanted a used GTI. Sure, it’s a bit Euro-trash of me to get this car, but I don’t care what you people think, I like the car.

I went to test drive it today during a pretty good downpour and was very impressed. I’ve driven them before, but this was the first time I finally got to drive one alone without a salesperson hawking over me and grilling me with questions to pretend he was actually interested in me / trying to gauge how much money I make.

Originally I had cringed about the GTI’s curb weight when I first started looking at them (3,800 lbs for a small FWD car? Ouch!), but I definitely found out why it’s so heavy-it’s a very solidly built car. I think the doors on the GTI vs. the bumper on the Accord would be an interesting head-to-head battle, though I don’t plan on trying it out.

Despite it’s heft, it’s a pretty quick little car. I was really impressed with the 1.8T-it will flat-out get up and go! The interesting thing is that it can easily be bumped up another dependable 30-40 horsepower just by chipping it. Eeps!

Another fear of mine is how it would handle in the weather-a co-worker had mentioned that they suck in the snow. Honestly, I don’t think I believe that. They are quite heavy, front-wheel drive, and it felt very solid and stable in the heavy rain today.

My only remaining fears about the car would have to do with potential electrical problems which seem to be common lately in the Audi’s and VW’s. Luckily there is still a lot of warranty left for this car, and I’m considering getting the extended warranty as well so it will be warrantied for the entire length of my loan. I’m still flip-flopping about that decision, though.

Anyhow, perhaps I’ll post some more impressions once I’ve driven it for a couple of weeks, tried the 9 steps to cook rice, and learned about all of those cool nuances German cars have.

I think the best one of the day was a car I was actually willing to drive to Colorado Springs to check out. It hadn’t been “reconditioned” by the dealer yet.. as I was getting ready to leave, the salesperson called and told me that I didn’t want the car– it had been lowered, all of the emissions equipment had been removed, and it looked like it had been raced. You’d think they would of caught that when the dude traded it in? Anyhow, he said they were probably going to take a big hit on it and have to auction it off. Well played. I mean it was at a freaking VW dealer.. you’d think they’d notice things like that during the trade-in process.

So basically I give-up for now– I’ve been scouring around now for a couple of weeks and not finding what I want. It seems like there are just not hardly any GTI’s on the market. I am however meeting with an auto broker later this afternoon to see if they can find what I’m looking for. I’ve never worked with one before, so this will be an interesting new experience.

However, since I’d seen him last, he had bought a new toy (still has the AMG too)– A 2003 Porsche 911 Turbo! And turns out, he drove it to the party! Finally towards the end of the evening I had to take advantage of the opportunity, and asked him to take me for a spin, and he obliged.

We walked out front, and there it was– a Yellow Turbo 996. I’ve only see maybe 3-4 since they have came-out in person, and I was getting to ride in one! Perhaps because they are slightly rare and the 125K price tag deters most from buying one (including myself). He had recently bought it (slightly used with 11K on it), so it still had the temp tags on it.

So to spare you the drama, the car was absolutely amazing. In the short time he’d owned the car, there were a few mods done to it (coil overs, chipped, and a short shifter), but it’s sort of hard to imagine needing to mod a car like that. He was actually telling me about a few mods he was considering and was asking my opinion about them. For the most part I told him he should get a decent exhaust, and leave it alone. It’s such a great car as is.. no sense in messing-up what Porsche has designed, make it less reliable and more expensive to maintain, etc.

The acceleration was both smooth and violent– it was nearly impossible to tell when the turbos kicked in as the power curve was very smooth, but it would be impossible to do anything but sit back in the seat and grin in amazement. For a 400HP+ car, it was also very quiet, and didn’t feel like it was squatting from the acceleration at all. I wasn’t ready for the curves at all either– I totally got slammed around in the seat as it went through them effortlessly.

He was running a mixture of 93 and 100 octane, and with it chipped, it was letting him run 1.2 bar of boost (17.4 lb). The chip was pretty amazing for a street car, but not something I would want on a race car. It monitored how you were driving, and would decide how much boost to run and at what RPM it should peak, etc. Also, since the car was starting to run low on fuel, it trimmed back the boost a bit just in case of fuel starvation. Pretty cool stuff.

Of course something you can’t help but notice is how much attention that car gets. Pretty much anyone in another car or on the street turns their head to check it out. That was kind of fun.

He said he’ll probably take it to Bandimere sometime just to see what it will do– should be interesting!

Anyhow, I’m still pretty amazed I got to ride in one… I honestly think this was more impressive than riding in a Shelby Cobra race car at Second Creek… ( I had the chance to do that a few summers back .)

Here are a few more specs about the car:

http://porsche.jbcarpages.com/911/2003/index4.php
http://www.seriouswheels.com/top-2003-Porsche-911-Turbo.htm

Overall, everything went really well. I flew out to Sacramento on an 8:40 AM flight on Saturday, May 8th which arrived there at a bit after 10 AM, and got back this afternoon at around 4 PM.

As I walked outside to the passenger pick-up and immediately saw the Z being driven-up, I could not believe that this was the car I was buying. It was pretty amusing to see the majority of people outside waiting to be picked-up turn their head as the car got closer and closer. I also heard pieces of a few comments from a distance. When the car is clean, I must admit it really is that impressive in person.

I was pretty much in awe of the condition of the car after looking it over. Other than a few chrome trim pieces being a little worn, and some other minor cosmetic things, it reminded me of a car which had maybe 30K on it tops. It’s in super great condition, and I plan on keeping it that way. I love the color, however I wish he would of found someone else to do the spraying.

To most people it would look just fine, but I have an eye for these things and I just don’t feel like the guy doing the spraying did enough work between coats, nor did he do the best job of spraying evenly. Don’t get me wrong– it looks great, but it won’t pass for a show car unfortunately.

We drove to a close-by In-N-Out Burger to do the painless transaction, and the original owner went on his way. I of course ordered a burger, and then began my trip.

Being that it was a long, boring drive down I-80, there weren’t necessarily many highlights of the drive, especially since I’ve done it as a passenger many times as my grandparents lived in California when they were alive. I did have an amazing gambling run in West Wendover, Nevada which I’ll post about later. Overall, a lot of people came to ask me about the car, or would check it out when I pulled in for gas.

Other than the gambling thing, I think my favorite part of the trip was a fuel stop I made between Salt Lake City and Park Utah. An older couple stopped there as I was fueling-up, and when the guy got out his face totally lit up. He was totally amazed by the car, and said that he had bought a ’77 280Z brand new off of the showroom floor back in the day, and of course regretted ever selling it.

He was talking about how he loved the color, and he said they didn’t come in that color. I was curious and wanted to pop the hood to check to see if I could see any spots where the blue paint wasn’t at (to figure out the original color), and he got way excited. (This was when I found-out that the car was silver originally) His reaction was great. I have to admit, a hood with the latches at the front instead of by the windshield (so that it opens up “backwards” like a Corvette hood) is really quite hot.

Before I left, he had his wife snap a photo of him, me, and the car. I had already paid for the gas, and he asked me to wait around so he could hear it start-up before I left. I obliged, and he was as tickled as little boy at the Neverland ranch to hear the Z start-up. It really made my day to see someone so giddy and passionate about the car.

The car ran great for the whole drive, and got somewhere around 21 MPG which is pretty good for an old sports car. My first order of stuff came in for the car (a sunshade, new dash badge, spark plugs and wires & a shift knob I’ve decided not to use), and I also have some detailing materials coming in soon as well. I can’t wait to get the car detailed and a deep, show quality polish going. It will probably not be until after the weekend that I drive it around much because of all of the little things I want to get done with it, but it will be worth it.

I took a whole slew of photos on the way home in various regions of the car, so enjoy! The pictures at the Great Salt Lake will really give you an impression of how much the car stands out in person. It’s pretty amazing. I definitely have no regrets about selling all of my DSM stuff and getting this car.

I wish I had more time and money to make the road trip a bit more fun, but it will be nice just to get the car and be on the open road for a couple of days to see what it’s all about. I do plan on taking the digital camera with me to take a few shots along the way home, though.

A couple of interesting things– the fuel gauge on the car currently doesn’t work, and it also doesn’t have air conditioning. That drive through Nevada is going to be a hot one! I plan on taking some basic tools, some water, flashlight, and probably some extra gas with me. Hopefully that plus the AAA Membership will keep me in one piece. (Let me mention the AAA Membership has already been valuable– they have a really cool online mapping thing available to subscribers, as well as hotel discounts). I also found a place online to buy a replacement battery and a car charger for almost nothing.. I’ll post more about it later depending on whether or not I’m happy with my purchase when it comes in the mail.

Nonetheless, I’m pretty excited, and it will be fun to do a long road trip again. I haven’t really done much over 8-9 hours of driving since my crazy ass Spring Break trip to South Padre Island in the Spring of 1999. Should be fun!