I Found It
7/9/2
Yep, I found it. It�s not what I was looking for, but it�s perfect. Now, let�s see if all goes as planned when I buy it tomorrow.
I was tempted not to look at it since I�m limiting the Miatas that I look at to the 1995-1997 time period. However, this little black and tan from 1994 with a price of �$7900 firm� was the closest Miata within driving distance. Well, with the exception of the 1996M at Driving2000.com.
Oddly, Sean, the PO [previous owner, actually still current owner, but we�ll fix that tomorrow], has looked at the 96M. I think now that he has a baby [it looked about four months old to me, but could be younger] that he�s in the mood for something more sedany-minivany. Once their Miata is gone, they�ll be an El Camino and late 1990s Oldsmobuick family. A GM family spanning the generations if you will.
Aisai and I will have become a Mazda household. When I first drove the 626 once we owned it, even with it�s bulk, it reminded me of 323 I had from 1990 to January of 2001. I had that car of a full decade and loved it, lack of AC and all. And I live on the sweltering planet of Alabama, mind you. This was some car love, man.
So, I decide what cars I want to look at while I�m still at work today. I�ll call Black and Tan man and if the car is gone, I�ll drive to the Black and Black about 58 miles away. However, knowing how picky I am about paint, the 1997 Black/Black for $5500 sounds like a borderline beater. A definite BLB [see end of last sentence] if it had been on Autotrader that long and hadn�t sold.
Before I called, I looked up where the house was by doing a reverse phone number lookup at Infospace. From that info, I used my utilities mapping program [Fieldview] to locate the house and find out what the driving directions would be. It�s within about six miles of my house, but in the county rather than the cities [neither Madison or Huntsville].
I call and the gal, Sean�s wife, answers and says the car hasn�t been sold. I ask if I can come over to look at it and if they lived at [number] [name of street]. She hesitated and then said yes. She asked if I could give them 30 minutes before I showed up. I did.
In that 30 minutes I scrounged the �To Be Filed� boxed in Aisai�s recently redecorated Study. Now I have the Library as my study and she has the Nursery/Craftroom as her study. I couldn�t find any courtesy checks for Blue. Aisai returned my phone call and said that we didn�t have any. I already knew this, but I really wanted to have some. She then said that if we did have any, they�d be from the other time we had Blue active. We ditched blue for a while. I was bitter about my card not being clear. The new card, however, is clear. Cha cha.
I show up at Sean�s with my five page checklist that I got from Miata.net. We talk Miata stuff and do through the checklist. He bought it with 68000 miles on it and now he�s selling it with only 73000. They�d taken it down to Florida twice and just driven it on weekends. He said it was so nice that he felt it was a shame to depreciate it by driving it to work in traffic.
And nice it was. Passed every checky item in the checklist. The paint was wonderful and he even showed great irritation at a very small bump where someone had played door tag with him. The paint was like a mirror. I rubbed my finger on it [skweek] and winced. �Unprotected,� I said. He told me that it has been sitting at his mother�s house in the garage since the baby was born and he hadn�t waxed it this year, and that the people who washed the car [and oversprayed the tire black] has stripped off what it had.
The first half of the drive, after 40 minutes of playing with everything on the car, was top and windows up. Nice nice. It was so nice. It passed it�s clutch test like a trooper. Turn at the school nearby and drop the top. At this time, I let him know that I�ll take it.
�Ideally, I hadn�t wanted leather since I was afraid it would make my back sweat, but I�ll struggle through it. Twist my arm.�
We drove back to his house, gradually as I made two wrong turns, and were ready to go to Redstone.
Oh, I didn�t mention that. Even though it�s a 1994, he said that Redstone said he could transfter 100% of the financing to me. Ja!
Oh, and I forgot to mention that his �$7900 firm� wasn�t very firm. He knocked it down to $7500 while I was looking at the patch in the top and we were talking about how I�d not planned on looking at 94�s since I can�t get 100% financing.
I�m not sure he�s right on that 100% thing though. That�s why tomorrow will be the deciding factor as to whether this will be �Hail the Conquering Hero� or �You don�t mind if I make like Oedipus and stab my eyes out� moment.
Things that could make it work:
1. The courtesy checks that I ordered last Monday could come in. After all, Aisai�s card which was ordered at the same time [the easiest way to get her name on the account since they wouldn�t let her, my accountant, get info on the balance, etc] came in yesterday. I did call and confirmed that the checks had been sent by calling blue before I went to Sean�s house.
2. He could be right about Redstone.
3. He could be wrong and Redstone could just approve me for the $5000 [2/3 of the value] and I could get a signature loan for the $2500.
Things that could make it not work:
1. The checks don�t come in, he�s wrong, and Redstone tells me to go jump.
3 to 1 isn�t such bad odds, eh?
[Oh, but Restone was already closed by then. So it's a tomorrow thing.]