M3 Not Going Anywhere Fast

When you buy a BMW M3 convertible, you imagine cruising at speed along your favorite back road in July or August. You love the way the semi-slick tires slide the car's arse out at even a dab of the loud peddle. Then you remember you live in Kansas City and it's been sh*tty since Thanksgiving and you can't even get your car out of the drive way.

 

 

 

So, you have to borrow your wife's front wheel drive Mini and leave the sad Bavarian frozen like a block of ice, in the hope that next week the sun will come out...cue orphan Annie singing.

Subarus are the New Volvos

 

Yes, this Subaru is actually stuck in place, look at all the tow bar scrapes on the ground

Right, I've had this theory for quite a while now, with no way to prove it...until I spent almost three weeks in Portland, Oregon.

See, there is a certain type of person, and for the past decade or more they've been inclined to drive older Volvo sedans and Wagons (especially the wagons, and especially the 200 series).

These people see themselves as outdoorsy, even if that is only driving to the mall, they dress up in L.L. Bean and North Face gear. The men like their hair unkempt and a little bit of facial hair, depending on their occupation. The women are similar with longer unkempt hair and less facial hair. They always look like they are either going for or returning from a hike. And the Volvo wagon is the car they use to drive to the hypothetical trail head.

They aren't what you would call "car people," they don't get a stiffy when Porsche announce the latest update to a 911 GT3 RS, but for some mysterious reason they are deeply loyal to their Volvos. And this is precisely the reason a lot of them are wandering over to the used Subaru market.

Their old Volvos were built in Sweden by Volvo, but then the Big Yankee American Uncle from Detroit bought them and decided to show the boys at Volvo how to make Swedish meatballs. When you've been flipping cheeseburgers for near a hundred years it doesn't really qualify you for the meatball game. Ford didn't think they would care, but these non-car people noticed. They no longer saw Volvos, but Ford Taurus' and Contours in drag where their boxy beauties used to be.

The bourgeois among this "class" can afford new Subarus and Subaru's PR and marketing team have done a great job telling them about all-wheel drive and the go anywhere attitude of their Outback wagon, ready to take on the malls and parking lots at a moments notice. But most of this class of people will be looking at older Subarus, no where near as old as their beloved Volvos. But as the Volvos get long in the tooth, scarcer and start to feel like very old cars, they look around the used car market, specifically they look for big dependable wagons and they see, glaring at them obviously, the Subaru Impreza and Legacy Outback wagons. And like some kind of Jungian car theory shift, they've all jumped ship, whether they're in the Midwest or the Pacific Northwest. Just like they all know to wear fleece jackets 365 days of the year: they all know Subaru is the new Volvo.

So, walking around Portland, in the rain, which is like saying, walking on earth breathing air, I got to see these people in their natural state. Some of them were holding on to their decaying Volvos, their babies duct taped into their car seats, others had made the move over to the Japanese Volvo, giving their off spring a better chance of survival in the more modern car with all wheel drive and airbags.

Cruising along the streets on foot I came across a used Mecca of Volvos. They had about twenty or thirty wagons and sedans, I'd say the had the whole 200 range covered from 1974 to 1993 when production ended. Some of them looking like they'd just arrived from 1985. Confirming the supply and demand theory I never listened to in my economic lectures.

So there is still hope for the Scandinavian loyalists, but eventually they'll have to face reality and move to Subaru, unless they are willing to choke down the Ford-parts-bin-Frankenstein that Volvos became post 1999.

Same people, two different cars and never the twain shall meet, whatever that means.

1989 Nissan Maxima

Not exactly what you would call a beauty. Photo Sourced

 

Like putting lipstick on a pig - Photo CarDomain

It was the first car I bought after the Cherokee was stolen. I went for months just sharing my wife's car (then still just the girlfriend). Her car was a brand new 2002 Nissan Altima and was a beauty to drive. So when I went shopping for cars I was in not much of a hurry to give up my driving privileges in the Altima, but as the school year got busier and we needed the extra set of wheels my hunting began in earnest.

I budgeted about $2,000 dollars, borrowed from work at a rate that would make a loan shark feel faint. This being the new millennium and everything was going virtual with the Internet, I ignored the traditional methods of car shopping and started my search out in cyberspace.

I was new to eBay and after a few days of searching I found an awesome 1992 Mazada Miata that I wanted to bid on. I logged on every day for a week, watching the price climb ever higher and then down to the last few minutes where every bollox Jonesing for a Miata suddenly logged on and put the price through the roof. Fail!

Another couple of days of searching and I came across a 1993 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP. Red with gold wheels, it looked the business. I always had a hard on for this slice of Americana automotive irrelevance, much to my own shame. It's kinda of like admitting to your friends that you do like fat chicks and no it wasn't just because you were drunk.

I kept my cards close to my chest this time and didn't bid to much, too often, I waited until the auction was down to its last few minutes and started bidding closer to my expected price. My newly acquired Internet savvy paid off and I won the auction. A $300 down payment secured my winning bid and I could pick the car up that weekend in El Dorado, Missouri; about two hours south of Kansas City.

Linh was very annoyed that we had to drive so far to collect the car, mostly because just a few weeks before I drove her all the way to St. Joseph to look at a similar car that looked like it just arrived from a demolition derby. But I showed her the pictures of the car and the seller's description and she agreed to drive down with me. God bless her.

After driving forever out into the heart of rural Missouri we pulled up in front of a small used car dealership. I went into the shop with the print-out of my winning bid in my hand and met the man I was going to relieve of one 1993 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP.

He looked friendly, in that six foot five hillbilly way that Missouri country boys possess. He was genuinely excited to meet us and show us THE CAR. We went out the back of the shop and there she was parked in the gravel and mud. From a distance it looked like the pictures on the Internet, but like a mirage it began to dissolve the closer I walked towards it.

The bodywork was terrible, cracks in the spoilers, paint scrapes and broken door mirrors and that was the good news. Inside, and I kid you not, there was mouse shit on the seats, little pellets of poo. Like who the feck sells a car and shows it with mouse shit on the seats? There was what looked like moss growing on the back of the passenger seat and the driver's seat was not affixed. I sat in it and it went all the way back, almost tossing me into the mouse shit in the back seat.

The seller came over with the keys, still genuinely excited, and handed me the keys with the notion that I take it for a test drive with two warnings "smoke comes out of the steering column when you put on the turn signal and the brakes aren't the best."

I could tell from the look on Linh's face that she didn't want to go anywhere in the mouse shit trap and wanted to go straight home. But for some dumb reason I insisted on taking it for a wee drive. We had come all this way after all.

The quick drive affirmed everything we knew was wrong with the car. A small fire in the steering column and plenty of power with no way of stopping. Linh told me to get back to the shop before we killed ourselves.

"So what do you think?" said the big fella now at the front counter of his shop with a weirdly placed wrench on the counter top. He could tell that we were not happy and with the placement of the wrench you could tell he was preemptive in his sales techniques. He knew the car was a sour lemon. Luckily he never had to use the wrench and we spoke civilly, as much a a hillbilly can and we left for KC a few minutes later and he promised to return the down payment. Linh handed me a large bag of "I told you so"s, for the drive home.

After a few days the check wasn't coming and a month of nasty emails ensued, especially after the second place auction highest bidder called me to find out why I didn't take the car. I was honest, even about the mouse shit. Ebay put us in arbitration, but to cut a long story short, I lost my money and gave up on eBay forever.

So I went back to the old fashioned pounding the pavement of used dealerships in the KC Metro area. I saw a lot of shit and met a lot of nice people and saw some great cars and met some people that you wouldn't bring to meet your mother-in-law.

I eventually found my car at a lot half way between the wife's parent's house and Diamond Joe's Strip Club in North Kansas City. It was a gold 1989 Nissan Maxima which left me with a little change from my $2000 budget.

After I bought it I had a friend look it over at his shop and he confirmed my suspicion that the engine was a lot younger than the car and he told me I'd got myself a bargain.

There was a few holes in the body work and I learned how to fill them myself and sealed the spare wheel well and replaced all the bulbs and indicator lights.

The car was perfect for driving up to Park University and over to my job at Pierpont's and the car never gave me a single pause in the years that I owned it. Although, an indicator did blow off the side of the car in high wind (my fault, I didn't seal it after I replaced the bulb.)

After college graduation the car saw less and less drive time, to the point where I took it off the insurance and put it in the garage with a cover over it. I'd covered maybe five thousand miles during the three years that I owned it.

A neighbor heard I had the car stowed away and told his cousin about it. He showed up one day with $1600 cash in his hands and with his lack of English and my lack of Spanish, I wasn't even sure I wanted to sell the car, we made a deal somehow and I was a few dollars richer and no poorer for passing on what was truly an ugly, but sound car.

So, if you cross a Rolls with a Ferrari you get a Nissan Maxima, mmh?