Keith's Blog: To Denver and Back in the Same Morning, Plus New Year’s Resolutions

Facebook followers already know that my day started early on Friday, December 29, with a 5:45 am flight to Denver from Portland. At 11:25 am, I flew back home. Of course, to most of the world this would seem like madness, but just 1,850 miles from achieving coveted “Premiere Executive” status on United, it was a small price to pay for bonus miles, faster upgrades and the like for all of 2012.

It seems to me that jets have become the Greyhound buses of the 21^st century, with constantly full flights, crammed overhead bins, surcharges for nearly everything and constantly rising fares. As a result, the mere notion of waived luggage fees and a nominally bigger seat feels like personally discovering the Holy Grail.

But the New Year has arrived, and it’s time to talk cars. (Suddenly even the most austere Bug Eye Sprite seems like an upgrade from coach on Frontier.) You’d think that after all these years of buying and selling, some the resolutions described below would be self-evident, but I’ve proven myself a slow learner when it comes to navigating the passion and logic of adding a car to the SCM collection.

(Btw, there’s a RHD 1974 Cooper available in Portland for the reduced price of $6,500. Hey, I’ve always wanted another one of those, and it’s cheap!)

Resolution #1: Don’t buy anything that I haven’t looked at with a specialist, or had a specialist look at on my behalf. With shop rates hovering at $100 / hour, it just costs too much to take care of all the little things that a distant seller can “forget” to mention.

Resolution #2: Don’t buy a car that is advertised as “nearly completely restored.” That’s like leaning into a punch, don’t you think? If it was so easy to put the car back together, why hasn’t the seller already done it?

Resolution #3: Don’t buy a car that has been color-changed. It’s just so tiresome, saying “Well, it was born green, but now it’s mostly red.”

Resolution #4: Don’t confuse a mass email sent out to 20,000 car guys with a “special offer meant only for me.”

Resolution #5: Try to cut back the number of saved searches on eBay. (The current ten include any BMW 2002 Tii, pre-1975 Alfa or Ducati Monster within 250 miles of PDX; Triumph GT6  or Austin-Healey 3000 within 500 miles of PDX; Porsche 911SC, Range Rover Classic and so on…)

Resolution #6: Ditto with the Craigslist RSS feeds, streaming from a variety of West Coast cities.

Resolution #7: Work with the ACC team to buy an ACC muscle car for the garage – I’m just nervous they’ll do something like run over the Isetta with a Road Runner and not even feel the bump.

Resolution #8: And finally, find time this year to create an SCM tour where we can invite our friends from around the country to spend a couple of days exploring the spectacular roads of central and eastern Oregon.

Have tweaks for my resolutions, or thoughts of your own? I look forward to reading them in your responses below.

Happy New Year to everyone, and thanks for being a friend of SCM.