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Consider this scenario…

Someone wants to spend $28k at your car dealership and has money available.

Do you…

• a) Try to help out, but put forth no actual effort?
• b) Do everything possible to accommodate and inform the buyer of options?
• c) Just blow the buyer off. You didn’t need that sale anyway.

Let’s just say that if you pick A or C, I’m done doing business with you.

Yes this related to my new car shopping and a certain Ithaca dealership. As of this writing, I think I’m at the final point of my patience. Here’s the latest problem…

It has been nearly THREE WEEKS since I’ve heard a single word from my salesman. That’s three weeks that I’ve been waiting, with money in-hand to get a new car. The reason? “We don’t have the accessory pricing yet.”

Yes, that is exactly what I was last told as to why I could not yet order my car. I figured I’d try to be patient about it. I did start inquiring at other dealerships (which, if you followed my latest postings, you’d know that I have very limited success in that area as well). Nothing yet has panned out.

Of course I’m not just sitting around waiting for the salesman to call me back… this past Tuesday I left a voicemail for him since he was out for the day – totally expecting a call back the next day (why wouldn’t he?). Well here it is on Friday and I STILL have not heard anything from him. Tried to call again and the secretary there said he may be with a customer and offered to put me into his voicemail again. So I left yet another voicemail. Though knowing that he was in the office today, I’m essentially making this evening the cutoff. If I don’t hear back, it’s game over.

And now, thanks to a friend that is also interested in a similar car, we both have sort of compared notes and there may be light at the end of the tunnel. I hope. So if I don’t hear anything from the original dealer by later tonight, I’ll be taking a drive tomorrow to hopefully put in an order and put down a deposit.

It’s time to get this ball rolling. I’m tired of waiting.

Figured today that it was time I actually drove some of these cars I’ve been pining over. I had my list… and figured it was as good a time as any to take some for a drive – even if I wasn’t buying today. I needed to narrow my list down and see what I did and did not like.

Jen and I went up to Maguire in Ithaca after work today and I was able to get a few drives out of the way. For those that don’t know, Maguire is probably one of the largest dealers in the area. They have 5 brands just at the location that I went to – and another few down the road. This particular dealer is Toyota, Scion, VW, Audi, Kia, and Volvo. All under one (currently expanding) roof. Subaru and Hyundai are down the road.

Today I got to take a drive in 2 (sort of 3) of the cars on my list. They had each a 2010 VW GTI and 2010 Volvo C30. Sadly both were automatic – but at the very least the drive would offer a chance to see how they really felt… or how comfortable they were. And I don’t even mean physical comfort in sitting in them. I mean everything… perception, touch, sound… how does it really feel getting in and out of one? I was also able to test drive a VW Golf TDI. The salesman thought it might be a good one to try just b/c of the torque of the diesel and it was also a 6spd. Worth a shot… I figured. Keep on reading to see my initial thoughts and reactions to each…

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My tC will be going away.

I’m not sure when yet, but it will. It has been good to me and a lot of fun – but I need to move on. I need to upgrade. More power, more fun… just something different. Whatever I end up with, I may even keep it mostly stock. Maybe just some minor cosmetic stuff (wheels? tint?).

So far I’ve been working on a spreadsheet of possible options (as I’ve mentioned in the past). Many of my previous considerations are still in the game for the most part. I currently have 6 cars in the running – though some more than others. In no particular order, I’m currently considering

• Volvo C30 R-Design
• Mazdaspeed 3
• Mini Cooper S
• Subaru WRX (2011 body style)
• Hyundai Genesis 2.0 Track
• VW GTI

And that’s about as far as I’ve gotten. I mean, I’ve gone through and priced them all with the options I’d want and have compared… but I’m still left scratching my head. I really don’t know what I want. I’ve compared warranty coverage (Volvo and Hyundai rock here). I’ve looked just at power (the WRX and Mazdaspeed 3 destroy everything else here). Even gas mileage is factored in (nothing is close to the Mini).

They have some negatives too… The C30 is kind of pricey – but am I paying for better warranty and stylish looks? The Mazdaspeed is quite small inside for it’s exterior appearance. The Mini tries too hard to be quirky on the interior and really pushes me away. The WRX is only a 5spd with not fantastic warranty coverage. The Hyundai is the RWD out of the lot and long term reliability is still up in the air. The VW may also have reliability questions.

I still have a little while until I REALLY get into this and start test drives – but even narrowing things down to that part is hard. I’m going to spending way more money this time than with my tC (possibly as much as $10k more) so I want to make sure I nail it.

It just might take me a while…

Forgive my ramblings here… but whenever I think of what I want to be “when I grow up” – this is what always goes through my head.

They say that if you try hard enough, you can have or be anything… I disagree. Not that someone should not be optimistic about things – because there are a lot of things people could do if they were to try. It’s just that the list is not infinite. Like I could never be a member of British Parliament. And if you try to say that I could be, you’re either lying to yourself (and me) or you’re an idiot. I could also never be a race car driver. At least not without a lot of help.

If you have been reading my site at all, you’ll know that driving/racing is a big part of my life. But I “race” around cones… in a parking lot… with my regular car. And while this is tons of fun as it is, it’s still hard to call it racing – especially when I explain it to people who don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s kind of like saying you’re a Chef – but you assemble cheeseburgers at McDonald’s. Just not quite the same thing. I’d love to be an actual race car driver – and I’m not even being picky here, I don’t need to shoot for Formula 1 or anything, I’d just like to drive an actual race car. Professionally. Continental Tire, Rolex, ALMS, World Challenge, any of this would be ideal.

I like to think I do well at autox… and that I have some skill. I would also like to think some of this would translate into driving on an actual track and that I wouldn’t be awful. Sure, there’s a LOT (even a “lot” is an understatement here, I realize that) that I would have to learn and would like to learn (hell, there’s a ton I still need to learn about autox)… but I would like to believe I have a tiny amount of talent and wouldn’t make a total ass of myself.

But how do I even get to that point? I don’t even have the budget I’d like to be able to prep for autox like I want to… let alone to build and field a race car in any sort of series. I also don’t have a racing/karting background like many of the drivers out there (note: I’m leaving NASCAR out of this b/c it would be a very cold day in hell for that to really be where I ended up). I’m just a regular guy who likes driving and would like to race for real. But what kind of chances do I have? None that I know of.

How about driving schools? Sure that would be awesome, but chalk it up as another thing I don’t have the $$ for. So is it just that I don’t have enough $$? Do only rich people race? Do you have to be rich, in order to get into racing to become more rich? Is that the only way? And yes, I realize that getting into racing to become rich isn’t how it works – that’s not why I want to do it – I’m just illustrating a point.

A couple years ago VW started their Jetta TDI Cup series and at one point I actually thought “hey, I could try to get in on that…” but then you need to front like $20k for the car and stuff. Not to mention go on the road with the series for all of the races. There is just no way… where do I get that money? How do I pay my bills on the road? Do they pay you to race in this series even if you don’t win? The questions go on and on…

Point is… unless someone can point out something obvious to me that I’m missing, I see no way for me to ever follow that dream… not at this rate anyway. Is it so much to ask?

I’m from NY. When there’s bad traffic (elsewhere in NY, we don’t get bad traffic at home), people act like NY drivers. Pretty much get a lot of

Fuck this guy, I’m not letting him in! Find another place to merge buddy.

And various other issues when driving in traffic. NY drivers aren’t exactly what you would call “polite” in any sense of the word. It’s quite sad actually. I mean, most aren’t even nice enough to move over when you’re trying to merge from an on-ramp and no one is passing them – but that may just be ignorance.

Here in CA, it feels different. There is ALWAYS traffic here – but the merging seems to go rather well. I don’t really understand. When two busy lanes come together, most of what I’ve seen is very even – one from this side, one from that side, one from this side, etc.

Maybe it’s different in other parts of CA even. Maybe they’re assholes elsewhere, I don’t know. But in the route I’ve been taking to and from work, I don’t think I’ve had a single issue in getting where I’m going.

One piece I find helpful is having an in-state license plate. That way I’m not automatically badged a tourist that doesn’t know where he’s going. Though I have to say, even for a tourist, I think I did pretty good getting around – especially without a proper GPS. I had to refer to my phone once or twice – but that’s not so bad for being in such a big area.

If you do your own maintenance on your car – getting any of that done in the winter without a garage is next to impossible. If it’s not 10° outside, there’s snow on the ground or something. Thankfully today was one of the anomalies that allowed me to get some work done – using Jen’s parents driveway that is.

It was about 40° today and sunny. Wasn’t going to pass that up. What did I have to do? Um… spark plugs, oil, transmission fluid… as a start anyway. I’m sure I could find more things to do on another day (clean the interior maybe?) but that was enough for one day.

Filled it up with some Redline MT-90 transmission fluid. Mobil 1 5W-30 oil… and some OEM Toyota spark plugs. Was actually the first time I’ve changed the spark plugs – but the OEM plugs theoretically should last some where around 100k miles. I just passed 80k.

Probably spent about $100 on everything (and had to order most of it online) but it should be worth it. I was about 100 miles overdue on the oil change and not sure when I last flushed the transmission. Should be good to go until sometime in late spring now. I haven’t been putting a ton of miles on or anything so everything should last a while – and I shouldn’t be changing spark plugs again while I own the car.

On my way to work I noticed a 2011 model year Hyundai on the lot of a local dealer. 2011. Why?

This bothers me for a few reasons. Mainly… it’s not 2011. And by that I really mean that it is not even CLOSE to 2011. It is still mid February of 2010. We’re barely into the first quarter! How can you even call that a 2011 model when it’s not even close to that year? And that also means that production of that model would have started some time last year – in 2009!

I can live with testing and concepts two years before your model debuts… but the actual production of it? Aren’t we a little ahead of ourselves here?

Another reason this bothers me… mileage. Take a second to think about it – the current average mileage for any vehicle is probably somewhere between 12k and 15k per year. This car will have that many miles before it even gets into its own model year! So look ahead to 2013 when this car now has about 40k miles on it. If you go by model year, that’s a 20k per year average – which kills resale. Comparatively, if you call this a 2010 with 40k miles in 2013, that’s only about a 13k per year average… which is way more “average.”

So what’s the deal? This is probably the largest model year to release year gap I’ve ever seen. Even Toyota really doesn’t start selling the next model year vehicles until around July of the year before. That seemed like a long gap before. Now it has just been shattered.

What can we do? Not much actually. In some situations I think they should just take a year off and push that design out another 6-10 months. But they won’t. This is the car industry and you always need to have your latest and greats out NOW! DO IT! MOVE! BUILD IT! SELL IT!

Eh hem.. sorry. So if you want to pick up a car super early to say you have the most recent one and don’t mind taking a kick to the balls on resale value – there’s a 2011 Hyundai for you just down the road from me.

This is just something that has been bothering me ever since I got into cars. Just want to vent a bit and share some info.

First thing is first: Camber is not the devil.

When I put my adjustable camber bolts on the front of my car and requested alignment at -2° camber up front you could have sworn the guys at the shop (Kent Brown Toyota in this case) thought I was absolutely insane. “Are you sure?” Yes. “You’re going to get a lot of tire wear.” No, I’m not, just do it.

Look… a little camber never hurt anyone. Hell, even up to something like -3° is probably fine. As long as you’re not going crazy with it – your tires will be OK… one on condition.

The rest of your alignment needs to be in spec – and most importantly: toe.

Toe is which direction your wheel is pointing when the car is “straight” – towards the inside or outside of your car. Pointing to the inside is toe “in” – the outside is toe “out.” Any out of spec toe settings can destroy your tires in a relatively short period of time. This is ridiculously accelerated if you have some sort of “custom” camber setting.

Say you have -2° of camber and something like 1° of toe “in” (assuming spec is something like +/- .2°)… you will end up chewing up the inside of your tire pretty quick. Not in like a couple weeks or anything – but it will significantly shorten the life of your tires – especially along the inside edge – very uneven wear.

Your best friend in all of this is an alignment as close to factory specs as possible. Your tires will thank you. And if you’re into any sort of performance or modification – don’t be afraid of a little negative camber – no matter what the shop tells you.

If you want to know a bit more about alignment, check out this Tire Rack article.

Note: I’m not a mechanic. I just play one on the internet. I don’t guarantee this info is accurate – so you should also research stuff on your own. Hopefully it’s at least partially correct.

Most feedback… for anything at all… is negative. People like to complain. If things are going well, no one thinks about it. If things are going badly – we’ve got problems.

So in a minor bid to change that a little, here is a little positive feedback in terms of “word of mouth.”

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I recently had to deal with Progressive with regard to my insurance policy continuing to skyrocket (up to $1028 for 6 months if I renewed straight up – for 2 cars, 2 clean drivers – crazy). After an ordeal of calling up and essentially “complaining” about my policy continuing to climb, they worked with me to start essentially a new policy with all of the same info – which saved me something like $240/six months. And even beyond that – the payments are now every month (instead of 5 on and 1 off) so that’s spread out further, thus making the payment even lower. Suffice to say I’m going from what would have been about $212/mo to $130/mo.

Anyway… after the new policy started and I made the first deposit payment, my online policy kept reminding me to submit proof of my security system and such for the discount. Uh whaaa? The guy that setup my new policy assured me everything would transfer and I’d be good to go.

Well I emailed Progressive again and basically said “I was told this… and it says this.” That was last night.

Got a reply this morning confirming that I’m set. Nothing to mail/fax in or prove. The policy is ready to go and I’m all done with having to fight for a lower rate (for now).

So nothing big. But it’s nice to contact someone about something you think is a problem and then are assured that it is actually OK in the end and you don’t have to worry about it. So thank you, Progressive. You are still showing me that you’d like to keep my business (even though I had to essentially call and ask if you still wanted it after you kept jacking my rates up).

It may come as a surprise to some of you, but I actually have a clean driving record (for the last 3 years as far as insurance is considered anyway). Even with what I drive and the way I drive, I’m clean. So is Jen.

This makes it very difficult for me to understand why my insurance continues to climb EVERY six months. “Oh we had to adjust our policies for NY state.” Shenanigans! There’s no reason for my policy to go up $60-$70 every six months for “adjustments” or whatever. Can’t be possible.

Well today I received the renewal notice for my policy which would be effective 3/28. It would now go up to $1028 for six months (note: that is for two cars and two drivers). That is ridiculous when just this past six months it was $900-something. And $800-something before that. Come on people, we need to put a stop to this.

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