My son just wanted to look. As a young car-obsessed kid interested in a future of car design, he is desperate to own a sports car. The kid has taste, though, and knows the value of a Porsche over a Corvette.
He wants his first car to be a Boxster so he can drive to high school in style.
He wants my new bride and me to own a 911.
Wishful thinking, right?
This weekend, my 12-year-old son asked if he could grab the iPad and search for some used Porsches. Sure, I said, why not? Armed with a country full of used cars at his fingertips and a determined ambition to find us a new car, he spent the next couple of hours looking.
He’d approach us every 5 minutes or so, saying things like, “How about a 1984?”
“Maybe,” my wife said, “but if I were to go old, I’d rather have a Sportomatic. Look for a ’74 Sporto.”
And he did. One was in Great Britain and listed for 18,000 pounds. One was in California and listed for $30,000. One was too beat up to bother restoring. Soon we had him look newer, but not too new. We revised his criteria to between 1999 and 2002 and priced under $20,000.
The little guy delivered and showed us a plethora of used 911s from that era and within the price range. We narrowed the field a little more, limiting him to only coupes with a sunroof, all-wheel drive, 4 seats and a 6-speed manual transmission.
Wouldn’t you know it, he found a couple not far from where we live. Well, close enough that we could fly fairly inexpensively and drive our new used Porsche home in a couple of days.
At this point we looked at one another and wondered out loud how serious we were about this. Serious enough, it turns out, to contact a couple of dealers and entertain the idea of sacrificing a tropical honeymoon for a 911 and taking a couple of days to drive it along the California coast. Lucky for me I have a woman who values the necessity of a Porsche over lame things like tropical honeymoons.
Will it happen? Eventually, yes. If the right car at the right price showed up, then we’d probably jump. For now, though, we’re still at the stage of letting our little guy search the listings and pass along the deals he thinks we can’t live without.
One of these times he’s going to hit the jackpot, and I’ll book a flight.
Would you sacrifice a honeymoon for a car?
-tgriffith
Find Used Cars in Your Area at CarGurus
Used Chevrolet Corvette
Used Porsche Boxster
Used Porsche 911