"TotallyThatStupid" (jbbush)
12/01/2015 at 17:59 • Filed to: None
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"TotallyThatStupid" (jbbush)
12/01/2015 at 17:59 • Filed to: None | 0
| 15 |
Our affliction for old Audis is colored by rose-tinted glasses, and brought into high-definition clarity with 20-20 hindsight. A 5000S, Ur-S4, or Coupe Quattro? Sure, back in the day they were junk fixable only at the dealer. But today we have the power of the Internet. Compound that with the fact the horrible cars have mostly fallen off the road – or landed in Craigslist backwaters like Olathe, Kansas – and only the nicest examples show up for sale on enthusiast sites like !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .
Consider !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in Orlando, Florida of all places ( !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ). It’s a one-owner car, local to the Sunshine State its entire life. Seems a rather oddball choice for a location that hasn’t seen snow since the glaciers receded. The seller makes himself (herself?) out to be an Audi 90 geek, which is probably the type of person you want to deal with when buying a car like this.
Whatever. Knowing I’m not replacing my rusty Mercedes-Benz E320 until next year, and knowing my wife wants a BMW 5 series as our next fleet addition, I still float the idea:
Me: “Okay, I know you want a 5er, but this is just plain awesome. You never see them this clean.”
Wife: “It’s so NOT awesome…”
Me: “It is! You’re just not seeing it.”
God bless my wife. The woman has an opinion. This is both a blessing and a curse. I love that she cares, but it’s maddening that she cares enough to weigh in, other than an obligatory, “Just do whatever you want.” It’s a subtle line in the sand, made of concrete and rebar. To be fair, she has put up with my car shenanigans for going on 18 years. She has rarely outright said no to a car – a certain hot-rodded Alfa Romeo 164L comes to mind. But she has opinions, and a basic set of ground rules:
No green.
She has to like the way the rear end looks.
Still being fair, my wife has been driving our 2004 Toyota Matrix XRS-6 for 11 years, since we bought it new. Sure, she’s also driven our other cars, but Trinity has been her main ride. While neither of us wants to get rid of the trusty Toyota wagon, she wants something different. Specifically, she wants a BMW 5 series. She’d like an E39 (nice cars, plentiful, but most tend to not age well), but could be happy with an E34 (tend to rust, newest ones are 20 years old, and so, so many are green).
Eventually, we’ll move the rusty Benz down the road, and I’ll drive the Toyota when I’m not driving something more interesting in the good-weather months. Which is fine. I like that car, and with six forward gears and a fuel cutout around 8,400 rpm, I generally have fun driving it.
But what I really want – this week, or really just today, like right now – is this old Audi.
The car presents beautifully. The pearlescent paint, which can easily curl up and die in sunnier climes, looks deep and shiny, even on the horizontal surfaces. Sure, there are some dings here and there (so claims the seller), but the car is pushing 25 years old. The two-piece Speedline wheels, apparently free from corrosion, are just drool-worthy.
Inside, the cabin is equally gorgeous. Minus a small bit of wear on the driver’s seat – again, 25 year old interior – it shows just about perfectly. The dashboard and steering wheel are clean, with only the shift knob showing 135,000 miles of use. The door panels look like elbows have never rested upon them. The nets on the backs of the front seats were likely saggy from Ingolstadt. Gray is not at all my favorite interior color. However, the condition combined with the general design from this period in Audi’s history trumps the rather blah hue.
Mechanically, the car looks to be tip-top. In addition to listing out all the maintenance and repairs over the last 15,000 miles, the seller shows images during some of the work – love that pretty new timing belt! Shame we don’t get to see the “bag o’ snakes” one-year-only exhaust header. Included are undercar pictures showing what appears to be a very clean and dry belly.
These cars are pretty easy to work on, and are now well-documented. The problems are known, and most of the really nice examples still roaming around have had their past demons exorcised (future demons TBD). The negotiable $4,300 asking price seems completely reasonable. But that’s about what most of these seems to go for, on the off-chance you find an example this nice. Nobody seems to care at a dollar level much higher than this. Sure, they’re smaller cars, on the order of a BMW E30 3 series, and not as well-known as an Audi Ur-S4/S6. They are also arguably more interesting than an E30, and today certainly more rare than all of the above.
Winter beater? It’s so clean, so maybe? But only with an unlimited account at the local car wash.
Totally That Stupid is a blog run by two lifelong car geeks. More at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . You can also !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .
Steve in Manhattan
> TotallyThatStupid
12/01/2015 at 18:05 |
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With my SigOther, I lose the battles AND the war. You have lost, you just don’t know it yet. “Let the Wookie win R2” (not that your wife looks like a Wookie).
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TotallyThatStupid
> Steve in Manhattan
12/01/2015 at 18:07 |
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Eh, so far I’ve lost a few battles, but they’re more like internal power struggles rather than all-out bilateral warfare.
jkm7680
> TotallyThatStupid
12/01/2015 at 18:07 |
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DO IT, too clean for a winter beater though.
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Steve in Manhattan
> TotallyThatStupid
12/01/2015 at 18:26 |
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Then keep her. We’re shopping for an apartment to buy now, and I’m completely useless. I find them, she rejects them - the balance is maintained.
That's gonna leave a mark!
> TotallyThatStupid
12/01/2015 at 18:47 |
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Your lucky. My wife picks her cars by which one has the prettiest color. I do not make this up. She is always pointing out cars with colors she likes and asking “what kind of car is that?” Doesn’t matter if it’s an suv, sedan or compact. What actual car she buys turns out to be basically a lottery. Learned long ago there is no way I can put any logic into this so I just sit back let her go.
jdrgoat - Ponticrack?
> TotallyThatStupid
12/01/2015 at 21:03 |
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My first car was almost a 1990 90, fwd 5 speed. (And then also, a fwd auto... my dad had fun shopping and driving even before I got my license.) Just a 10V and no where near as drool-worthy (to us weirdos) as the 20V quattro... So I may be a bit biased, but I want that thing so hard. I especially want a CQ 20V. And I remember the 20V quattros going for <$3k in Minnesota about a decade ago. I’m rambling, and I wish I could keep that car in my garage.
Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
> Steve in Manhattan
12/02/2015 at 11:07 |
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You need to learn how to “stack the deck” with the choices. Back when I was married, I made a list of around 10 houses that was within our budget and in areas we liked. Then we looked at them and got her to rank them from her most to least favourite. And we put in an offer on a house that was her most favourite of the 10... which was the house we ended up buying.
And of course each one of the houses on the list was one I liked or could at least live with... and any place I didn’t like wouldn’t make the list in the first place.
;-)
I don’t know about how your wife is, but my ex was/is not a very logical thinker when it comes to something like finding a home. And giving her an abundance of choice only results in an endless/indecisive hell of looking at one place after another because one place after another gets rejected for one superficial reason or another.
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Steve in Manhattan
> Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
12/02/2015 at 12:45 |
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This is something altogether different. Putting together a list of 3, much less 10, that have the things we want is difficult. Stuff that’s priced correctly often sells in a bidding war, and we’re not quite ready for that. Sometimes they’ll take an overpriced apartment, sit on it for a while, then raise the price so it gets renewed attention. At our price point, rich guys buy for their mistresses and parents for their kids in college with little thought to whether the price is right. This market is weird.
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Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
> Steve in Manhattan
12/02/2015 at 15:44 |
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“This is something altogether different. Putting together a list of 3, much less 10, that have the things we want is difficult. Stuff that’s priced correctly often sells in a bidding war”
Oh yes... I know aaalll about that... same type of thing goes on in many in-demand places in Toronto. But I know NYC/Manhattan is worse for that.
But you see, if it was truly priced correctly, there would be no bidding war.
The point is that something has to give... unless you’re a Saudi Prince. And in my experience, it’s usually up to us guys to put our foot down to keep things realistic. I’m not saying that based on just my experience. I’m also basing that on what I’ve observed with married friends I have. In most cases, it’s the wife/GF that wants the fancy place, in a fancy area, has a bunch of needs that are really just ‘wants’ and is much more likely to say things like “it’s
only
an extra $100,000”
If you can’t put together a list of 10 places, it tells me that the budget needs to be increased (either more debt, more savings, cashing in investments), more flexibility is needed with the needs/wants/features/location or some combo of these.
And on the whole bidding war thing... It’s a fact of life with in-demand areas. Personally my approach to bidding wars is to put in my best offer and if it isn’t accepted, walk away.
I had the same discussion with a woman I dated earlier this year. She wanted a detached or semi-detached 3 bedroom house that is walking distance from the subway for less than $500,000.
I told her that it’ll never happen.
Oh sure, there were properties *listed* in that price range... which she, like you, thought was the “correct” price. But those were always the ones with bidding wars. The going rate for something like that in the area she was looking is $600K to $800K, depending on the condition... and I showed her real estate selling price data to prove it.
Doing that caused her to get more realistic... though it took about a month for the truth/reality to sink in. She did find a place... but it was a condo-townhouse walking distance to the streetcar... or one bus ride to the subway. She had to settle for a smaller (but still nice) place in a less desirable (but still nice) location.
For a reasonably priced place, you might have to become “Steve in Brooklyn” or “Steve in Harlem”... at least for the first place you buy until you can build up some equity.
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Steve in Manhattan
> Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
12/02/2015 at 18:19 |
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We looked in Brooklyn - much of it is more expensive than the Upper West Side. I work contract jobs all over the city, she’s in one place, so that drives the location. We used to live in SoHo, but now she’s in love with the UWS, and I won’t fight that - I’ve lived here for 12 of the last 15 years.
She’s been willing to pull the trigger on one, maybe two apartments. I’ve been ready to go on about four of them. We’ve seen about 40 places between us (?) .... There was a time crunch due to us being prequalified, but now we’ve got a better source, so that’s not the issue. Lease here is up end of August. We have some time.
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Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
> Steve in Manhattan
12/02/2015 at 18:34 |
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Well I wish you all the best luck in finding a place.
And luck definitely plays a role as well. I got lucky with my last house sale/purchase. The place I was selling had 3 interested buyers... 2 of them very serious.
And on the place I bought, I was the only one putting in an offer. They were hoping for a bidding war, but it never happened since I was the only offer... and without conditions as well.
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Steve in Manhattan
> Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
12/02/2015 at 18:53 |
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As a lawyer, former real estate agent, and formerly licensed appraiser, my idea was to make a contract contingent on it appraising for at least the settled-on price. How wrongheaded was that? Now we’re pre-approved, so we can go in as cash buyers. And everything I’ve bought before was subject to a home inspection. Not this time.
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Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
> Steve in Manhattan
12/02/2015 at 19:07 |
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Yeah... in a high demand area, you can lose a place easily while waiting for the inspection. But you sound like you have enough experience to know what to look for and would spot most things an inspector would spot. And just about anything is fixable with enough time and money.
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Steve in Manhattan
> Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
12/02/2015 at 20:23 |
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The one we missed out on would have cost $75K to put in a kitchen and bathroom. Called my former real estate boss from the early 90s. He now sells vacation property in SC. I described the market to him. He said, basically: stop thinking and buy a fucking apartment. It’ll be worth more before you close the deal.
I don’t like that advice, but he’s right.
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Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
> Steve in Manhattan
12/02/2015 at 23:00 |
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You mean that using a portable fridge and a hotplate isn’t good enough of a kitchen for you? And you can’t get by using a chamber pot ???
LOL