Yep. I drive over 100 miles every day and much prefer an automatic.Just lazy ass Americans. That's all it is. (I'm American so I can say that, right?)
I'm saying that in jest, but I believe that it is a convenience factor, particularly for those who primarily use their cars for commuting. Just one less thing to deal with during that painful slog to and from work.
- Walter.
A good friend of mine was an Uber driver for a few years. One night in Little Rock, he was carjacked at gunpoint when he dropped off his fare. He fled the scene on foot to get help and when he returned, his car was still there and had only moved a few feet before the engine died and the carjackers couldn’t get it restarted and had fled themselves. His car was a stick shift.An Abarth is to a Fiat like a Shelby is to a Ford. The Abarth was a sweet machine.
I wish everyone in America was required to buy a stick. It would stop a lot of accidents. Hard to text when you're down shifting.
It wasn't my intention to sidetrack the discussion! I just wanted to mention that I was getting a car specifically due to the pandemic, mentioned I was getting a manual, and then all of a sudden the subject just grew!
Got a response from the dealer selling the yellow Fiat 500. And for once, it wasn't a form email! It was legitimately written by the sender, and it included the information I had requested!
Once I start expanding on what happened when I tried to communicate with the other dealerships, you'll understand why this particular response is a small miracle!
BTW, the car was bought by the dealer last September and put up for sale in October. The asking price was already dropped once by about a grand.
I already know what I'm willing to pay for the Fiat, but that will involve a lot of ball squeezing.
Seriously, I've been paying very close attention to the prices of the Fiats on various sites, both dealer and private sales. I even checked out the prices in the USA as a point of comparison (you're asking way too much!). I know what the car's worth and likely how much the dealer paid for it.
After eight months up for sale, and moving into a pandemic induced sales slump no less, the price could go down pretty catastrophically just so they can get rid of it. They'll still make money off of the sale, just not as much as they would have hoped.
Same hard limit for me (10 grand CAD, 7 grand USD). I'll tell them this up front since the dealer's located in a rural community outside of Ottawa. I need to rent a car to get there and don't want to waste time and money on what would be a pointless trip. I'll simply look elsewhere.
Now that the car discussion in one of the pandemic threads has been branched out into its own thread, allow me to expand on my car searching experience.
I've previously lived in Montreal, Canada for thirty years where owning a car was not necessary at all due to a decent mass transit system. I moved back to my birth town of Ottawa (our nation's capital) some five years ago where mass transit may be lacking, but was functional enough along with the taxi services that I still didn't need to own a car to get around. I only need to rent cars for trips outside of the city, and mostly for business purposes.
The pandemic started, and everything changed. Situations are now cropping up where I'll need to get out of the apartment to get things done, but I would prefer to avoid using public transportation in order to avoid being exposed to the virus because I am an occasional asthmatic, triggered off primarily through illness. Catching the virus could potentially be very dangerous for me, even deadly.
It was time to isolate myself not only at home, but also when I'm outside. I needed to buy my first car.
But not just any car. After years of renting a wide range of vehicles, most of which felt like clones of one another even across different brands, I wanted something fun to drive for a change.
Hence, the Fiat 500, the only rental car I've ever wanted to keep after returning it.
The specific trim I'm searching for is the Sport Turbo model, or simply the Sport. Unlike the Pop and Lounge models with their common bodywork (three painted tabs are replaced with chrome tabs to transform a "Pop" into a "Lounge"), the Sport trim has its own unique bodywork and is equipped with larger 16 inch tires which are much more comfortable over bumps and potholes than the stock 15 inch tires of the Pop and Lounge models.
I'm aware of the car's reputation as being unreliable, and I'm prepared to risk it. I've been learning about the car's quirks for a few years now, lessons that have become more intensive during my search for the perfect 500. And since this car won't be a daily drive, my exposure to mechanical issues should be minimal.
Honestly, the car wouldn't have had anywhere near as many reliability issues if it were built in Canada instead of Mexico. We know how to build cars well enough that American and even Japanese automakers trust us to build their cars here.
The biggest hitch in all of this is that I've never purchased a car before. I've only visited dealers to look at the cars and see if any of them would interest me. I've never experienced the full dealership nightmare which seems to be all too common these days. The only time I ever driven a car off a lot was a loaner from a dealer for a car review video I did many years ago when I tried to launch a television channel in Canada.
No, you don't get any points for guessing which car was reviewed!
In the next few days, I'll relate my experiences in searching for a Fiat 500 including pictures, interesting exchanges with a few dealers, and fascinating Carfax reports from some of the cars I've found which will make you wonder what the heck happened to these poor vehicles.
Until then, please watch the only car review video I've ever made dating back to June of 2011.
I know, but its usage would be limited to the summer months. It's not the kind of car I would be willing to drive during the winter months. Even I'm not that cruel.
- The interior volume of a Miata is fairly small, which means that the heater can get the space pretty toasty in short order, along with heated seats and strategically placed vents winter driving for me is never uncomfortable. Of course that doesn't do anything for your luggage space concerns, but I thought I'd chime in about the Miata's winter performance in terms of comfort. Now that I am a little older I don't do it as much, but as long as there wasn't precipitation I would drive with the top down even near freezing temperatures, due to the heater's performance and the vents that would blow directly on the steering wheel.
Average winter temps in Ottawa are about -10C to -20C (14F to -4F) with occasional windchill drops below -30C (-22F) thanks to the high humidity.While i realize that it gets a tad cooler in Ottawa during the winter months when compared to Texas
