The King of Impulse Buying

I didn't do my oft-deserved (but occasionally not) reputation as the King of Impulse Buyers (DAMN YOU Sams Club, for giving me that reputation!) any favors last week. You see, I had planned on making that Cleveland trip again, but the weather simply wasn't good enough up by the lake. Having already planned the day away from work and gotten some time on my Dad's busy horse racing schedule, I decided that we would instead make a trip to some of the local car lots. He's in the market for a nice, pre-owned BMW, and Columbus is a much better hunting ground for a car like that than the truck-centric semi-rural area he normally shops in.

Long story short, he didn't find the car he was looking for, but I did. As I was wandering around the massive CarMax (a tremendous place to buy a used car! It was the easiest used car buying experience I've ever had - highly recommended!!) lot, I happened across a car that I've been looking for off and on for a couple of months: an under $10k Miata. While I didn't actually write a check for it on the spot, the 2 hour delay in running home to get the checkbook doesn't really change the fact that there was not a lot of time spent between seeing the car and owning the car!

So, without further ado, here's my new (to me) drive-to-work-except-when-theres-a-forecast-for-snow car:





This is truly the RV-6 of cars. It's small, handles very well, doesn't have huge reserves of power, but you can't drive it without smiling! It's tiny, though - I could easily simply step over the doors to get in, rather than opening them and climbing down into the seats. It was a real eye-opener when I first pulled into the garage and look up at my lawn mower!

It's a base model 1996 with 72k miles, new paint, new top, new Potenza tires, and a new Jensen radio. No reason (in my mind, anyway) that it has to remain a complete base model, though. I think a few bling items would go nicely, like these new wheels and a new steering wheel:






I think I might reupholster the seats in leather too, since the old cloth seats are pretty worn and the headrest speakers need to be replaced anyway. I think the gray in this example would go nicely with a scarlet color car here in Buckeye land:



I wonder how Harbor Freight is for metric car tools....