Bizon Hunting: Upgrade!

(The first installment of Bizon Hunting can be found HERE.)

Ten years of driving the Sentra was enough, I was ready for my dream car-a car I really wanted. With a 160,000 miles I said goodbye to my old friend. Still running great but a little tired I gave it to a college student in need of some wheels. When I set out to find my dream car, I realized I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted. I started by outlining my greatest desires first and then seeing which potential candidates fit. Having lived my whole life in the Midwest and now living in sunny SoCal, I knew I wanted a convertible. I wanted it to be sporty and fast. Reliability was a concern but I didn’t put it before the overall driving experience I was looking for. I was planning on buying a used model that was still under warranty so if something went wrong, I had an insurance policy of sorts. The search began.

Choosing a convertible eliminated a lot of cars right away. I started out researching the Corvette, Mustang, Porsche Boxster, (911 was out of my pay grade) BMW M3, Saab 9-3 and Jeep Wrangler soft top. I quickly eliminated the Saab and Jeep, both nice rides but not fast enough. I decided against the Mustang as I remember a friend’s that rattled like crazy after awhile. The Corvette and Boxster didn’t have back seats which would be a hard sell with the wife as our family was growing and didn’t seem practical enough. I know, practicality is the last thing on the list when it comes to a dream car but I didn’t want to have any regrets. That left the BMW.

I quickly realized that the convertible version of the M3 was a little bit more than I could spend. I actually settled on the hard top version as the car was too cool to pass up. I searched for about 2 months in Autotrader, the paper and eBay motors. I eventually found a convertible that seemed too good of deal to be true: the pictures looked good, the title was clean (getting a subscription to one of those car title reporting agencies is a great idea when looking for used cars, most let you examine the titles of an unlimited number of cars for a given period of time, like 90 days) and it was for sale by a private party. I wanted to buy from a private owner as it seemed like a better idea, you can look the guy in the eye and tell if he loved his car. Men who love their cars take care of them. With buyer beware mentality, you don’t want to buy an expensive car from some sleaze ball.

So with auto reviews, title reports and check book in hand I was ready to go and see some of the M3s I favored. I began setting up appointments and the first one would be the aformentioned convertible. I’ll give the full details next time, but I wanted to let you know what ended up happening with the Sentra. The girl I gave it to drove it to about 200,000 miles and one day she woke up to find it stolen. Fortunately she had theft insurance. It was recovered but deemed totaled by the insurance company, the car was found essentially intact but the airbag unit was removed. She received a check for $1,500. I had no idea the car was worth that much money, I think she made out pretty good. She liked the car so much she used that money as a down payment for another Sentra!