| Abby's 2000 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am | ||||||
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| Why This Car? |
In early September of 2000, I was driving around the 1991 Mazda RX-7 which had been my first fun car. I'd bought it used in early 1997, and had always been terribly attached to it. However, it needed a new transmission -- a rebuild wasn't recommended -- and had a slew of more or less minor problems, and the cost of replacing the transmission alone was going to be equal to the car's value.
Chad had spent the better part of a year trying to convince me to replace my RX-7. In that span of time I had come up with a list of features that a car just had to have in order to steal my heart away from my RX-7. First of all, it had to be zippy: I had to like how it drove. I wasn't willing to ever again be stuck driving some underpowered 100-hp four-banger with a top speed under California freeway speeds (the kinds of vehicles I'd had before the RX-7). And it would have to look cool, too -- I was not willing to be stuck driving around in a vehicle that screamed "Hi, I'm a suburban mom." However, it had to be able to accommodate a forward-facing toddler seat so that I could, in fact, ferry around our son. What's more, it needed to have some cargo space. I mean, we put a 7-foot Christmas tree in the RX-7 once. It wasn't an easy fit and the hatch didn't close, but it was doable.
Lastly, it would have to be an automatic -- while I'd learned to drive on a stick and have always believed that if you don't know how to drive stick, you don't really know how to drive, the bottom line is I've got bad knees. And when I last had a stick, I would find myself in stop and go traffic with my foot on the clutch and my knees shaking something fierce, hoping to God I didn't pop the clutch because I just couldn't keep it in.
So, what with expensive work needed to keep the RX-7 going and all, Chad talked me into looking at a new used car. He rounded me up one Sunday morning and took me to a used car lot, where a 3rd-generation RX-7 and an early 90's Corvette were parked side by side. "I want you to test drive both of those cars," he told me. In a fit of car sales genius, the used car dealers had apparently locked the keys to the Vette in the car, so I would have had to wait rather a long time to test drive that. But I took the 1993 RX-7 turbo for a spin. While I liked it well enough, I didn't love it -- it quite literally had zero cargo space, I mean, not even enough to pick up two bags of groceries if I had a passenger in the car. So the newer RX-7 failed a critical test.
Coming home from the used car dealer, though, I was annoyed I hadn't gotten to check out the Vette. So I called up the local Chevy dealer to see if they had any used Corvettes I could take a look at. They did, so I went over there to investigate. Unfortunately, their used Vettes were all only about a year old, and thus out of my price range. They did appear to meet all my requirements though -- you could definitely get a kid seat in the passenger seat just as well as you could in a 2-seater RX-7, and they had a staggering amount of cargo space for so small a car, and as to the rest, well, c'mon, it's a Corvette.
"Well," I asked the salesman, "Tell me -- what do you have that'll go for thirty grand or less?" He grinned, and pointed across the showroom floor. "How about a Camaro SS?" he suggested. And that's when I started to hear that Dead Milkmen song in my head: "They bought me... a BITCHEN CAMARO!" Stifling a giggle, I followed the salesman back out the lot and climbed into a 2001 Camaro SS.
Driving the car off the lot, I turned onto El Camino Real and stepped on the gas a bit. The rear tires squealed and the car leapt out into the stream of traffic. "Whoah!" I said, making a mental note: way more oomph off the line than the RX-7. By the time I'd driven the car a few miles along surface streets, I'd gotten fairly comfortable with it, gotten a good sense of the visibility in the car, and it was definitely superior to the RX-7. Merging onto I-280 I realized that, simply put, it just kicked the shit out of the turbo RX-7 I'd driven that morning too. But the problem was, I thought, exiting the freeway after a perfectly satisfactory test of the vehicle at highway speeds, I couldn't stop that song in my head, "Bitchen Camaro! Bitchen Camaro! Bitchen Camaro!"
I just couldn't see myself in a Camaro. Sure, I liked it fine, but no -- I couldn't picture it being my car. Maybe with a little work, you know? I knew the Camaro was a car that, in time, I could learn to love, but it just didn't sweep me off my feet. And that's what I really wanted a brand new car to do.
I told the dealer I'd think about it, and to give me a call if they happened to get in any Corvettes in my price range. Not satisfied to leave it at that, I thought about Chad's mother having really liked her Firebird, and drove up the street to the Pontiac dealership to ask about a Trans Am.
As it happened, they had a low-mileage 1995 Trans Am for $15K, and I thought that was really worth thinking about. After chatting with the salesguy for a bit, I took it for a test drive. It was the first 6-speed I'd ever driven and I was hesitant at first, because of never having driven a six-speed, and because it had been over three years since I last drove stick. However, it came back fast, and to my satisfaction, I didn't have so much as a rough start. Of course, I revved pretty high -- if I'd been driving any other car it would have been ridiculous.
After a bit of tooling around on surface streets to get the feel of the car and driving stick again, we hit the freeway. Merging into traffic was a breeze, and the Hurst shifter was truly a delight. By the time I hit the far left lane and moved it out of 4th, through 5th, and on up to 6th, I was grinning like a complete fool. That's when I looked at the speedometer. With the tach showing 1500 RPM, I was doing almost 95.
"Holy shit!" I said, taking it out of gear and coasting for a bit, slowing back to something resembling the speed limit. The salesman in the passenger seat was cackling with laughter. I drove a few more miles on the freeway, then coasted up an offramp and put the car back into 3rd, thinking to myself, allright, if I can still figure out what gear I need to be in then I don't completely suck as a driver, maybe I could drive stick again after all...
Back at the dealership, I had to say no, I couldn't do it, I had to get an automatic. They didn't have a single automatic on the lot, but by that time, I knew I had, in fact, been swept off my feet by the Trans Am.
I spent the next couple of weeks figuring out the financing with my credit union, reading everything I could find about Trans Ams, scouring dealer inventories for an automatic to take for a spin just to be sure I liked it as much as the six-speed, and daydreaming about what colour car I wanted. I read everything I could find about negotiating for a new car, and what to do when you buy a new car... I wanted to do everything right. And the financing came through, I narrowed it down to 2 colours (midnight blue or blue-green chameleon), decided what options were a must and what I could take or leave.
I actually have to say, I really enjoyed picking out exactly the car I wanted. It was a whole new experience for me -- you know, cars I've had before were all solidly used and quirky, and I just took them how they were. It was such a kick to say to myself, "Nah, I don't really want to pay $600 for the factory-installed CD changer. I definitely want traction control. These are the wheels I like." It was big fun reading the slick Firebird book and scouring the web sorting wheat from chaff, learning new acronyms fer cryin' out loud.
It was also fun scouring dealer lots for cars, and getting to test drive several. I'm really glad I drove the 3rd-gen RX-7 first, because I did enjoy it, but after I started test-driving the big V8s I was totally disappointed in the Mazda. Of course it didn't help that my RX-7 was in crummy running condition. I was wanting that new Trans Am bad.
I finally ended up buying from the dealer I located using the gmbuypower.com search form. I checked several local dealers and "Give me your best price on this car," and Joe Bardo, the fleet manager at Stevens Creek Pontiac, came back with the best price and did the most legwork. I knew from my own research that the price he gave me was fair, and it was the exact car I wanted -- he located 4 cars that met my basic spec, and this one had everything I wanted, nothing I didn't want to pay any more for, and the upgraded rear axle, which I knew I wouldn't mind. Joe didn't try to sell me any other car, was not condescending because I'm a chick, and gave me a trade-in price for the Mazda that I was happy with.
The car was in Sacramento, though, and would have to be delivered. The paperwork was all done on Thursday the 14th, and the car was due the following day. To my chagrin it was delayed till that night and I coudln't pick up the car till morning. The anguish of waiting! The funny thing is, I felt like a total wuss a scant week later when someone told me about waiting through a GM strike for his 1998 WS6, but that extra night of waiting was rough. Chad made me watch the Smokey and the Bandit movies, which all just happened to be on TBS, saying that it was ridiculous for me not to have seen those movies if I was going to have a Trans Am.
I picked the car up a little before ten on the morning of the 16th. It had just been detailed and my first sight of it was sitting in the garage area, gleaming, looking mostly blue, with green glints where the light hit it. Man, what a thrill. I looked at the honeycomb taillights, the small red bird, "Trans Am" in red against the black plastic, I eyed the sweep of the rear spoiler, and grinned. My car!
I rode while the dealer drove the car out to the front of the lot. We did the last pieces of the deal, in which I handed over the check and the keys to the RX-7 and got the keys to the Trans Am. I got in the car, and started adjusting the seat and mirrors, smelling the new car smell, listening to sound of the engine running. I remember looking a last time at my old car, then backing out from behind it, and slowly driving past it and off the lot. The digital odomoter read 400.5 miles -- the car had been driven around some even before it was driven down from Elk Grove.
It was a beautiful sunny Saturday. It was such a thrill driving home, coming home to Chad and Edward with the new car. Diana was coming over later, and Chad got together with Jim, and Diana and Edward and I went for a ride, Chad having put Edward's car seat in the Trans Am, where it fit securely and well. It being a gorgeous day, naturally we cruised with the t-tops off! I put a hundred miles on the car that day.