Introduction
Thread Starter
Evolving Member
iTrader: (11)
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 270
Likes: 2
From: Bay Area, CA, USA
Introduction
Just joined the board, but have been lurking for a couple of weeks. My name is Joe. I'm from the SF area. This is my story:
Been into cars forever. I've owned a number of sports cars, the last being a BMW M coupe. I parted with that car almost 2 years ago at the end of the lease. I didn't own another car, but told myself I could just ride my motorcycle until the Mini's came out. When they showed up, I was unimpressed. They are cool little cars, but I really expected them to weigh a heck of a lot less. Good old BMW. Plus they were FWD and I told myself many moons ago that I would never, ever, ever own another FWD car.
So I looked around for something better. I didn't find it....until Lotus announced that they would bring their Elise S2 over. It would be a long wait, but it would be worth it. I waited and waited. Another autocross season passed. My friends all got new cars and I got an old pickup to haul my motorcycles around in. Then word came that the Elises would be delayed even longer.
Three weeks ago I was driving to the racetrack with my friend and I told him that I should just go get a new car, drive it for 2 years and then get the Elise after it finally arrives. What to get? I never would have even considered an Evo except I kept reading all these great articles. Plus another friend drove one and recommended it.
After Saturday's practice, my friend and I had the afternoon to kill. We agreed to go test drive an Evo. The dealer played all the usual games - making me practically buy the car before I could even test drive it, showing a lot of ignorance about the car, not listening to me, asking $4000 over MSRP, glossing over questions they didn't want to answer, pressuring me to buy tonight.
They even sent me on a test drive with what is surely one of the most inept drivers ever to sell cars. Frightening. After a couple of turns, I just relaxed, knowing that my seatbelt was cinched tight and I was likely to survive the accident I predicted was forthcoming. Fortunately, something else happened:
The salesman pulled over and let me drive. First impression? The seats are near-perfect. Grippy, enveloping, and firm. The steering is impossibly quick, providing lots of feedback. The pedals were - God bless the Japanese, they finally figured it out - set-up for heel-and-toe downshifts! The chassis was tight, as was the suspension. The power was acceptable. It had 4 doors, allowing me to make 3 passengers sick at a time. The tires were sticky. The brakes were solid and clearly overkill. Driving it was fun and the car reacted more like a racekart than a sedan.
Back at the dealership, despite only that morning deciding to bring my 2 years of sportscar-lessness to an end, despite the Evo only vaguely entering my mind as a potential candidate, despite going to the dealer just to test drive, despite being out of town at a dealer 3 hours from my house and not having my checkbook with me, and despite me knowing better than to make a $30k decision over the period of a couple hours, I bought one.
If it hadn't been a spur-of-the-moment decision, I would have tried to find a silver, no-spoiler, no-moonroof model. As it was, the dealer had black, yellow, white, and red. My first instinct was to go with white. It had the low spoiler and would be much stealthier. The red one with the tall wing sitting on the showroom floor did look pretty cool though.
My friend, who built and races a wild BMW 2002 with a supercharger, NOS, and a massive rear wing, was no help at all. He ignored my statements about the white car and just said 'get the red one. It looks cool.' I have never owned a red car. They are just too eye-catching and the cops never seem to overlook what you're doing. And that spoiler! It....just.....looked.... like it matched the rest of the car perfectly. "I'll take the red one" I said, thinking I would regret this in the morning.
Nope. I love this car. There is hope for the Japanese yet. We all knew they could built great cars. They finally figured out how to export them here.
And don't pay a dollar over MSRP. It took 4 hours for the dealer to realize I wouldn't and agree to MSRP. Guess they wanted to make sure I was positive about that.
I prefer to keep my mods to a minimum, but I'm sure I'll do a few things here and there. In the meantime, I'm going to be start autocrossing it and possibly doing a few trackdays. In the meantime, I'm sure I'll have a few questions. Hopefully I'll have time to post some stuff on here and on my website as well.
Later all,
Joe
http://www.joe250.com
Been into cars forever. I've owned a number of sports cars, the last being a BMW M coupe. I parted with that car almost 2 years ago at the end of the lease. I didn't own another car, but told myself I could just ride my motorcycle until the Mini's came out. When they showed up, I was unimpressed. They are cool little cars, but I really expected them to weigh a heck of a lot less. Good old BMW. Plus they were FWD and I told myself many moons ago that I would never, ever, ever own another FWD car.
So I looked around for something better. I didn't find it....until Lotus announced that they would bring their Elise S2 over. It would be a long wait, but it would be worth it. I waited and waited. Another autocross season passed. My friends all got new cars and I got an old pickup to haul my motorcycles around in. Then word came that the Elises would be delayed even longer.
Three weeks ago I was driving to the racetrack with my friend and I told him that I should just go get a new car, drive it for 2 years and then get the Elise after it finally arrives. What to get? I never would have even considered an Evo except I kept reading all these great articles. Plus another friend drove one and recommended it.
After Saturday's practice, my friend and I had the afternoon to kill. We agreed to go test drive an Evo. The dealer played all the usual games - making me practically buy the car before I could even test drive it, showing a lot of ignorance about the car, not listening to me, asking $4000 over MSRP, glossing over questions they didn't want to answer, pressuring me to buy tonight.
They even sent me on a test drive with what is surely one of the most inept drivers ever to sell cars. Frightening. After a couple of turns, I just relaxed, knowing that my seatbelt was cinched tight and I was likely to survive the accident I predicted was forthcoming. Fortunately, something else happened:
The salesman pulled over and let me drive. First impression? The seats are near-perfect. Grippy, enveloping, and firm. The steering is impossibly quick, providing lots of feedback. The pedals were - God bless the Japanese, they finally figured it out - set-up for heel-and-toe downshifts! The chassis was tight, as was the suspension. The power was acceptable. It had 4 doors, allowing me to make 3 passengers sick at a time. The tires were sticky. The brakes were solid and clearly overkill. Driving it was fun and the car reacted more like a racekart than a sedan.
Back at the dealership, despite only that morning deciding to bring my 2 years of sportscar-lessness to an end, despite the Evo only vaguely entering my mind as a potential candidate, despite going to the dealer just to test drive, despite being out of town at a dealer 3 hours from my house and not having my checkbook with me, and despite me knowing better than to make a $30k decision over the period of a couple hours, I bought one.
If it hadn't been a spur-of-the-moment decision, I would have tried to find a silver, no-spoiler, no-moonroof model. As it was, the dealer had black, yellow, white, and red. My first instinct was to go with white. It had the low spoiler and would be much stealthier. The red one with the tall wing sitting on the showroom floor did look pretty cool though.
My friend, who built and races a wild BMW 2002 with a supercharger, NOS, and a massive rear wing, was no help at all. He ignored my statements about the white car and just said 'get the red one. It looks cool.' I have never owned a red car. They are just too eye-catching and the cops never seem to overlook what you're doing. And that spoiler! It....just.....looked.... like it matched the rest of the car perfectly. "I'll take the red one" I said, thinking I would regret this in the morning.
Nope. I love this car. There is hope for the Japanese yet. We all knew they could built great cars. They finally figured out how to export them here.
And don't pay a dollar over MSRP. It took 4 hours for the dealer to realize I wouldn't and agree to MSRP. Guess they wanted to make sure I was positive about that.
I prefer to keep my mods to a minimum, but I'm sure I'll do a few things here and there. In the meantime, I'm going to be start autocrossing it and possibly doing a few trackdays. In the meantime, I'm sure I'll have a few questions. Hopefully I'll have time to post some stuff on here and on my website as well.
Later all,
Joe
http://www.joe250.com
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