Web cam madness, Vette’s

I have seen these around for sometime. I’d love to have one in my office so the geeks that watch my cam page could do things like pan around the office, zoom in on stuff, all that junk. However, it would be next to an impossible sell for the wife, unless I raised the funds from the sale of something else or other non-salary sources. I will be scouring my house for potential sale candidates.

The other week, on the drive home I noticed a house with a nice looking vette outside of it with a for sale sign on it. A Vette has always been my dream car, the top of the food chain in GM muscle cars. However the sky high pricing has always been a deterrent. Well a week or so later, we were driving by and again the vette was out there but this time it had a piece of plywood in front of it with 7,000 spray painted on it. Hmmm ok, that drew a double take from me. That is within the realm where I could actually think about it. Then, last saturday, on my way back from a rock pick up run, I stopped and actually looked at it. The owner came out and told me it was an 88. It has over 100k miles, 109k to be exact. On the outside it looks pristine, bright red with hardly a scratch on it. However as with most vettes of this time period, the weather stripping was shit. The owner said he got a quote of 800 odd bucks to replace it all. The interior was not in great shape, it needs new rugs, a new console, a good cleaning and some minor odds and ends. All stuff that I am able to do. All in all not bad for a 16 year old vehicle. He started it for me. It sounded a bit rough, he said it had one of those performance chips in it and it was a little rough until it warmed up. I asked him why was he selling it and how long he has owned it. He lost his job 3 months ago and he only has owned it for a couple months. He said originally he was thinking of asking 10k for it but said he needed to sell it asap and was willing to sell it for around 7k. Sounded reasonable. I told him I’d give him a ring if I had further interest.

Ever since then I have been thinking about it often. Surprisingly, Ali gave me her total blessing on it. She said I deserve it and she wants me to get one. You would think that would be all it takes right? Well my commitment to getting Ali to be able to quit her job this year is weighing on my mind heavily. Purchasing the car would retard the timeline for her retirement from full time work. It feels like a selfish act on my part to get it. The other part of me is saying that once she isn’t working full-time, the opportunity to do something like this may not come for a long time. I’m torn.

In the meantime I did some research and found that actually 7k is an inflated asking price for a vehicle like this. Two different used car guides came back with respective numbers of 4700 and 5200 as reasonable pricing for a private party sale of a car in good condition with that amount of mileage, surprising. I did some snooping on autotrader.com and found some examples of vette’s selling in the 6k range with 20-30,000 less miles on them. I am debating if I want to contact the seller again and pursue haggling the price based on my findings. I even picked up the phone and dialed last night but it was busy 3 times. So here I sit, still debating the path to take. I know what the fiscally responsible thing is to do. I think I will continue on this holding pattern for a bit until something smacks me in the face to definitively steer me one way or the other.