Just a little bit of Buyers Remorse

A week ago I impulse bought a $23,000 car. I'm not really sure what I was thinking at the time. At a certain point I had a chance to back out of the deal, but I chose to stick with it. I took a road trip with my father and drove all of the way to Indianapolis and back in a single day to acquire this vehicle. (Here is a link to a website that sells versions of my new car.)

When I arrived and saw the car on a showroom floor I was simply blown away. The vehicle was much more beautiful than it looked in the photographs. It looked more like a sculpture or fine work of art than a vehicle to drive. It also looked very, very, very, tiny.

I am a large man. I can't blame Freemasonry for that, I've been overweight for a long time, but putting on the feed as regular as I do in the Lodge certainly hasn't helped. The car I purchased is so tiny that it makes a Mazda Miata look like a Cadilac STS in comparison.

The car I bought doesn't have windows, or a top, and the doors are for decoration only. The only way to get into and out of the vehicle is simply be stepping in it. When I get out of the car I literally feel like I have just stepped out of a go cart. In fact, that is really all it is. A possibly street legal go cart. The car weighs only 1250 pounds (that's before I sit in it) and has less than a 100hp. Nevertheless, the engine sits right in your back and the exhaust makes it sound like it is going to wake the neighbors as you rev the engine.

The only real use for this car is to place it into an auto-show or drive it on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

I have an addiction; some people are addicted to gambling, or drugs, but I am addicted to sports cars. I have been content, driving the same boring (and remarkably wonderful) BMW convertible for the past four years. (Going from my Beck 550 to the BMW is a gut wrenching psychological shift as you advance in automotive technology by a half of a century in a split second.)

A part of me, the part that decided to impulse buy this car, rationalizes that I work hard, make good money, and even though I contribute to charity, help others, take care of my family and children, and save for retirement, I still deserve to have some material thing that I get so much enjoyment out of. That was the logic that rationalized my spending 23k of my families money on a vehicle that serves about as much practical purpose as a painting on a wall.

I am confident that I can sell the car and get all of my money back out of it. That is, so long is it remains pristine and unblemished by any use I might make of it. Even now I am not certain how I will get this car licensed and I doubt I can get it insured.

The idea of going on a freeway with what is, for practical purposes, nothing more than a go-cart and drive side by side semi-trailers is frightening. The vehicle is so unsafe that were I to have any accident at all I would most likely die in an instant. It has all of the practical safety of a motorcycle.

In the end, I did this thing and I have to admit that the car is stunningly beautiful. When I drove back from Indianapolis I got a bigger reaction to the car than I ever received driving my Ferrari 308. Many people who passed me went way out of their way to convey their enthusiasm and approval for the work of art I was hauling back home. At one point I even had a housewife with a child strapped into a baby carrier giving me animated thumbs up signals as she drove by.

The car is also fun to drive, in a very raw and basic sort of way. It is quite loud, not as loud as a motorcycle, but it isn't too subtle.

Now that I have it sitting in my garage I plan to see this thing through. I hope getting it licensed goes smoothly. I will drive it to work from time to time on sunny days and I will take it to a few car shows just to have that experience.

Perhaps a year from now I will sell it and get most of my money back and be able to add a new notch to my career of automotive experiences. Or, maybe, I will bond with it and decide to keep it for years to come. One nice thing about this car is that it is impossible for it ever to become 'old'. After all, it is an exacting hand built replica of a classic 1955 race car, of which there remain fewer than a hundred in the world, and it's not like its getting older is going to make it less cool. If you find an appeal in this raw, retro, driving experience then it can evolve as a special relationship between driver and machine.

I always figured once I became I Shriner eventually I would get myself a tiny little car for parades. It looks like I achieved that much at least...